Front Desk Summary
The Tangs move from one low-wage job to another, barely scraping by. When an opportunity arises to manage a motel and live rent-free, it seems like exactly what they’ve been waiting for. With her parents spend all their time maintaining the building and cleaning the rooms, Mia appoints herself as front desk manager.
But the family’s new boss, Mr. Yao, insists on making their lives difficult. He changes the terms of employment, charges them for anything that breaks, and asks them to enforce racist policies. Mia worries that her family will never break out of America’s cycle of poverty.
“We’re on a different rollercoaster. On our rollercoaster, our parents don’t have any money. So, we can’t go to good schools and then we can’t get good jobs. So, then our kids can’t go to good schools, they can’t get good jobs, and so on and so forth.”
Mia wants off the rollercoaster. She invents a new path out of poverty that is beyond the imagination of the people who created the rollercoaster.
Front Desk Review
FRONT DESK is loosely based on author Kelly Yang’s life experience, as explained in an author’s note at the end of the book.
Her straightforward writing makes this book perfect for younger middle grade readers (Mia is 10). Yet Yang tackles difficult issues like interpersonal, systemic, and institutional racism. She writes so simply and honestly, it’s hard to imagine a young person walking away without understanding these powerful messages.
FRONT DESK is infused with dark truths about America and still manages to be light, heartwarming, and fast-paced. Lovable Mia solves problems by using her writing skills—not her math skills as her mother wishes she would. She beats the system by using her words, often disguised as the words of adults, to point out injustices and find pathways to a better life for her family and friends.
Mia’s and her parents’ find—actually, create—community at the Calavista Motel. They fight back when multiple systems conspire to make life impossible for Hank, an African American man who lives at the hotel. They devise a system to hide desperate Chinese immigrants in vacant rooms. This is deep social justice work, accompanied by anecdotes of Mia’s follies at the front desk and problems at school.
The book ends on a hopeful note, with the Tangs’ community surrounding them to help them take the first step off the poverty rollercoaster. The solution they come up with has a chance at helping others get off, too.
What if we didn’t need one rich relative? What if what we needed instead was a lot of poor people?
FRONT DESK shifts the narrative about the American experience, acknowledging that there are many American experiences. The pathway to the American Dream can take many forms, and Yang has described one that is heart wrenching, hopeful, and a lot of fun along the way.
One final note: I was disappointed to see some early reviews of FRONT DESK that criticized it for being too mature, age-inconsistent, or “political” for younger readers. I have no doubt that these criticisms were written by fellow white parents. If you have the choice whether to expose your child to racism and other social injustices, you’re showing your privilege. Kids of color don’t get to choose whether they want to be exposed to racism. It’s a part of their lives from birth. So why would we choose to withhold that information from our white children? When we withhold books on the experiences of other cultures because they make us uncomfortable, we’re a part of the problem. Exposing our children and ourselves to books that represent diverse perspectives can be a first step toward understanding our own roles in upholding the systems of injustice in our country.
I pre-ordered a copy so I can share this beautiful story with young readers in my life! It publishes on May 29, 2018 from Arthur A. Levine Books.
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Tracy: Thank you for your review. I look forward to reading the book and sharing the title with kids at the library.
Wonderful, Maryann! I think you will enjoy the book. This is a debut author and I can’t wait to see more from her.
Tracy, you are doing an amazing thing here. YES, it shows privilege to be able to choose not to see or “expose” your kids to issues of racism, poverty, and social inequities in this country. Good for you for calling readers on that. We need more books like this and more platforms (or soapboxes) to share – loud and proud – about what so many of our young students and citizens live through daily. Bravo. And to Kelly Yang, thank you! We will be adding this to our library.
Dehlia, thank you for reading and supporting! So happy to hear you’ll be supporting Kelly, too.
Yang’s half-baked, self-righteous columns over the year in the South China Morning Post contained many instances of racism, couched in her self-pity victimhood at being ‘abused’ by the white system. The irony here is that she is a product of a highly privileged western system, and never misses an opportunity to excoriate it.
I have not read any of Yang’s other writing. My review here is based on my reading of her novel for 8-12-year-olds, which I found to be funny and intelligent and all around quite good. I’m not aware of her writing in the South China Morning Post, but I believe that systemic racism exists and is pervasive, and the way she wrote about it in this book rang true to me. A person can participate in, and even benefit from, an oppressive system and still recognize and voice fault with it.