Last Night at the Telegraph Club

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu has spent most of her life in a bubble, surrounded by her Chinese American community in San Francisco. It’s 1954, and she wants to explore more of the city. Along the way, Lily also starts exploring inward, interrogating the connection she’s had with her white friend, Kathleen. One night, the duo secretly ventures out to the Telegraph Club, a nearby lesbian bar, and their romance begins to bloom. Lily embraces her sexuality when she’s out at the bar, but keeps her relationship with Kath quiet at home. Their romance would be unwelcome in Chinatown—and Red Scare paranoia is looming large, already causing stress for her family. A sweeping coming-of-age narrative imbued with deep research, Malinda Lo’s novel, which won a National Book Award in 2021, is a celebration of identity and first love. Like Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, Lo’s entry into the canon of lesbian romance is significant for its relatively happy ending. —Annabel Gutterman

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