Days of Distraction by Alexandra Chang

Jing Jing’s San Francisco job writing about consumer tech—gadgets, apps and, particularly, gadgets with apps—is riddled with racial microaggressions and unkept promises of a pay raise. Through a cross-country move with her longtime white boyfriend that ends up isolating her, and a trip to China to see her father who would rather talk about food, Jing Jing searches for a place where her identity isn’t subsumed by someone else’s. Alexandra Chang tells this story through short bursts of narrative and a collage of interstitial texts—articles on discrimination, overheard conversations, Reddit threads—that create a sharp, wise and truly contemporary debut novel.

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