Black Water Sister

Zen Cho's novel Black Water Sister starts with a sentence that does an unusually good job of foreshadowing three threads in her story: "The first thing the ghost said to Jess was: Does your mother know you're a pengkid?"

The first thread is the supernatural. There is a ghost that speaks to Jess. 

The second thread is intergenerational conflict: "Does your mother know...?" That phrase is how judgmental adults speak to younger people finding their own path. People say that when they want to shame or threaten someone for an activity they think their mother wouldn't approve of. It implies that your mother still has control over you. Our mothers always do, to some degree, yet these words have less leverage once the young person has established their own household. 

The third thread comes from a word I don't recognize: "pengkid." Apparently, it's something that might worry a mother. Jess doesn't understand the word, either, as the narrator explains in the next few sentences. It's a word in a language she speaks but has a limited vocabulary in. This story will feature multiple languages and cultures; this one word tips us off that Jess is caught in a clash of cultures. 

One sentence points out three sources of conflict: supernatural, parental, and cultural. I admire that very much. 

I also admire the careful use of italics. There are different conventions for how to use italics. One is that all foreign words go in italics. Another is that thoughts go in italics. At some point, Zen Cho (with possible discussion with her editors) needed to decide whether to use italics in either of these ways. She decided against italicizing foreign words and in favor of italicizing the words of the ghost, which she hears soundlessly. This works very well – I found the words easy to follow, and the italics helped make the story clearer. If she had used italics for foreign words, it would have done two things that would not have helped the story: first, she would have had to decide which words were foreign, which would make all but one of the languages shown in the book defined as other, and that is not true to Jess's experience – who decides which words are foreign? Second, there would have been enough of those italicized words to tire the eyes.

I've had decisions like this to make for books I've worked on. I like the meaning and the result of deciding to use italics for a way to speak, and deciding not to use italics for words of some languages and not another. 

All of Black Water Sister was clear-eyed, thoughtful, meaningful, and suspenseful. I liked it very much. 

Three sources of conflict makes this sentence a hook. I found it an even better promise. It promised that if I liked young women in conflict with the supernatural and their parents, and who need to navigate multiple cultures, I would like this book. And I did.