Book Review of Joan is Okay by Weike Wang

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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224 pages, published in January 2022 (I received an advanced copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

YOU MAY ENJOY THIS BOOK IF YOU LIKE:

Literary Fiction * Pandemic-Inspired Novels * Asian-American Literature * Novels set in NYC

TRAVEL INSPIRATION:

Joan lives and breathes New York City and is constantly running up against her ancestral home of China, where nearly all of her family resides. The novel is set to span both pre-pandemic and early pandemic in the city, a unique time and space that will feel personal to those who experienced it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Weike Wang

Born in China, Weike was raised in Australia and Canada before moving to the United States. She has used her academic background and experience to inform her writing career. She obtained an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and a Doctorate in Public Health, both from Harvard, before pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts from Boston University.

Joan is Okay is Wang’s second novel; her first was Chemistry (2018). Chemistry won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, and Wang has been honored as a “5 Under 35” by the National Book Foundation.

REVIEW OF joan is okay BY Weike wang

People who know Joan - the doctors she works with at the hospital, her boss, her new neighbor, her brother - are pretty sure she is not okay. Joan isn’t sure why they can’t just leave her be - let her work constantly, keep her apartment minimally furnished, and skip out on holiday bashes.

Joan is a first generation Chinese-American whose parents returned to China after raising her and her brother in the United States. Early in the novel, Joan’s father has died back in China, so she does what she thinks makes perfect sense - she hops on a plane for a weekend trip home to China, returning in time for the next work week. This impossible trip of New York City to China to New York City in just a couple of days, not even including the fact that Joan has received the startling news of her father’s death, is an early insight into the workings of Joan’s personality.

Throughout the novel are experiences of otherness than have followed Joan since childhood. Sometimes based on her family’s socioeconomic status in her youth, sometimes based upon her Chinese-American background, sometimes based upon her own unique personality traits. There is a constant struggle between what Joan wants and what others think she needs that highlights the paternalism of modern American society: You are free to be yourself as long as you fall within a narrow definition of the norm; outside of that, you must need to be fixed.

Joan, we learn, is practicing medicine in the year 2019, a date that will henceforth be a harbinger of things to come. So it is no surprise when hints of an unusual illness start cropping up in China, no more than background noise at first. By the time this illness crosses the oceans, Joan is recalled from her forced leave of absence at work - where her superiors determined she needed time off to mourn her father - the pandemic is hitting New York City with full force. In an era were ‘it’s okay to not be okay’ became a public mantra and cry, Joan is Okay seems to ask: Is it okay to be okay even when others don’t think you should be? The exploration of Joan’s early years and upbringing raise the specter of populations that are forced to go-along-to-get-along and what that long-term impact could be.

Joan is not unknowable but she is hard to get to know. The complicated nature of Joan’s essence are best explored through her relationships with others. Joan’s mother temporarily moves to the United States after the death of her husband and haunts Joan’s brother’s monstrosity of a house. And Joan is foisted into a humorous and conflicted relationship with her neighbor, who invites himself into her life and apartment without any observations of the boundaries that Joan is used to having. He begins populating her apartment with “extra” furniture even though it is clear that he is ordering furniture and other housewares with the intent of filling Joan’s apartment. He decides she needs cable TV, and he invites others in their building into her apartment for a surprise housewarming party from which Joan flees to her brother’s house.

While on the surface, Joan may not be the most sympathetic character or someone easy to relate to, I found myself with a lot of sympathy and empathy for her plight. Her entire world renders her a stranger in a strange land, a sentiment that feels more universal today than ever.