Contemporary Authors

• The Astonishing Color of After ( young adult novel) Little, Brown and Company (New York, NY), 2018

1. The astonishing color of after LCCN 2017022920 Type of material Book Personal name Pan, Emily X. R., author. Main title The astonishing color of after / by Emily X.R. Pan. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2018. Projected pub date 1803 Description pages cm ISBN 9780316463997 (hardcover) Item not available at the Library. Why not?

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/exrpan

  Emily X.R. Pan
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  New York University
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  https://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-Color-After-Emily-X-R/dp/031646399X/

  Show more Show more of Emily X.R.’s summary
  Experience
  Little, Brown and Company
  Author
  Company NameLittle, Brown and Company
  Dates Employed2016 – Present Employment Duration2 yrs
  LocationGreater New York City Area
  THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER was published on March 20th, 2018. It debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, and was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top 12 books of the season.

  “Emily X.R. Pan’s brilliantly crafted, harrowing first novel portrays the vast spectrum of love and grief with heart-wrenching beauty and candor. This is a very special book.”
  — JOHN GREEN, bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down

  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30968233-the-astonishing-color-of-after

  https://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-Color-After-Emily-X-R/dp/031646399X/

  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-astonishing-color-of-after-emily-xr-pan/1126683245

  Represented by Michael Bourret at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

  FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology
  Editor-in-Chief, Co-Creator
  Company NameFORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology
  Dates Employed2017 – Present Employment Duration1 yr
  LocationGreater New York City Area
  www.foreshadowya.com

  "The purpose of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology is to offer a unique new online venue for young adult short stories, with a commitment to showcasing underrepresented voices, boosting emerging writers, and highlighting the beauty and power of YA fiction."

  | Self Employed
  Yoga Teacher
  Company Name| Self Employed
  Dates Employed2016 – Present Employment Duration2 yrs
  LocationGreater New York City Area
  RYT 500. Teaching vinyasa, yin, restorative, prenatal, and Unnata® aerial yoga. www.emilypanyoga.com

  Bodega Magazine
  Founding Editor-in-Chief
  Company NameBodega Magazine
  Dates Employed2012 – 2018 Employment Duration6 yrs
  LocationGreater New York City Area
  www.bodegamag.com

  "Bodega releases digital issues on the first Monday of every month, featuring poetry, prose, and occasional interviews by established and emerging writers. We’re here to give you a handful of essential pieces you can digest in one sitting."

  Penguin Group USA
  Marketing Coordinator, Penguin Young Readers Group
  Company NamePenguin Group USA
  Dates Employed2012 – 2015 Employment Duration3 yrs
  LocationGreater New York City Area
  "Penguin Group (USA) Inc. is a global leader in children's publishing, through its Young Readers Group, with preeminent imprints such as Dial Books, Dutton, Grosset & Dunlap, Philomel, Puffin, Speak, Firebird, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Razorbill, Viking, and Frederick Warne."

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  Education
  New York University
  New York University
  Degree NameMFA Field Of StudyCreative Writing, Fiction Activities and Societies: Washington Square Review, Goldwater Hospital Writing Workshop
  East China Normal University
  East China Normal University
  Field Of StudyAdvanced Chinese, International Business Activities and Societies: NYU in Shanghai Peer Advisor, 二胡, ECNU 外漢之夜
  New York University - Leonard N. Stern School of Business
  New York University - Leonard N. Stern School of Business
  Degree NameBS Field Of StudyMarketing, International Business, Creative Writing Activities and Societies: New York Laptop Orchestra, Hong Kong Students Association Marketing Chair, NYU Orchestra, French Speaking Freely, women's ultimate frisbee, Chinese a cappella group.
  Study abroad:
  • Shanghai, China
  • Paris, France

  Skills & Endorsements
  Creative Writing

  See 37 endorsements for Creative Writing37

  Endorsed by Dean Jason Sylvia and 9 others who are highly skilled at this

  Endorsed by 2 of Emily X.R.’s colleagues at Bodega Magazine

  Editing

  See 33 endorsements for Editing33

  Endorsed by William O'Daly and 5 others who are highly skilled at this

  Endorsed by 6 of Emily X.R.’s colleagues at New York University

  Copywriting

  See 33 endorsements for Copywriting33

  Endorsed by Joseph Rauch, who is highly skilled at this

  Endorsed by 2 of Emily X.R.’s colleagues at Penguin Publishing Group

• Emily X.R. Pan - https://exrpan.com/about

  ABOUT

  SHORTEST BIO (35 words):

  Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram: @exrpan.

  SHORT BIO (102 words):

  Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top twelve books of the season. Emily currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern United States to immigrant parents from Taiwan. She received her MFA in fiction from NYU, where she was a Goldwater Fellow. She was the founding editor-in-chief of Bodega Magazine, a 2017 Artist-in-Residence at Djerassi, and is co-creator of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology. Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram: @exrpan.

  LONGER BIO (195 words):

  Emily X.R. Pan is the New York Times bestselling author of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER, named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top twelve books of the season. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, but was originally born in the Midwestern United States to immigrant parents from Taiwan. She received her BS in marketing and international business from the NYU Stern School of Business, and her MFA in fiction from the NYU Creative Writing Program, during which time she was a Goldwater Fellow as well as the editor-in-chief of Washington Square Review. She was the founding editor-in-chief of Bodega Magazine, a 2017 Artist-in-Residence at Djerassi, and is co-creator of FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology. Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram: @exrpan. In the past she has worked for Penguin Random House (marketing children’s books), taught creative writing to undergraduates and long-term hospital residents, and held marketing roles at various companies in New York City and Shanghai. She spends her free time playing the mandolin, making art, and practicing and teaching yoga. Visit Emily online at exrpan.com, and find her on Twitter and Instagram: @exrpan.

  QUICK FACTS:

  Pronoun: she/her
  Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw
  Zodiac Sign: Libra
  Chinese Zodiac Sign: Dragon
  Hobbies: yoga, music, art, photography, traveling
  Favorite writing music: Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Rós, Flook, Joe Hisaishi
  Collects: musical instruments, cartomancy decks, enamel pins

• School Library Journal - https://www.slj.com/2018/03/teens-ya/emily-x-r-pan-grief-mental-health-ya-debut-astonishing-color/

  Emily X.R. Pan On Grief, Mental Health, & Her YA Debut “The Astonishing Color of After”
  By Shelley Diaz on March 20, 2018 Leave a Comment
  It may have taken many years to write The Astonishing Color of After (Little, Brown; March 19, 2017), but the results are what SLJ calls in its starred review “an exploration of grief and what it means to accept a loved one’s suicide,” with “lyrical and heart-rending prose” that “invites readers to take flight into their own lives and examine their relationships.” Pan discusses the novel’s many iterations, why it’s important to talk about mental health in YA, and what she’s working on next.

  Can you tell us a little bit about this manuscript’s journey, from initial idea to final draft? How long did it take to write The Astonishing Color of After?

  I started writing it in 2010, but it was a very different book back then. It was originally meant to span the first 40 years of a Taiwanese woman’s life (based on my grandmother), starting in 1927 in the mountains of Northern Taiwan. I was quickly overwhelmed by the research, so it didn’t take long for me to reframe it from the perspective of a modern-day teenage girl. I rewrote it many, many different ways, giving it whole new casts of characters, altering the premise and voice and format quite a few times. In 2015, I sat down to rewrite it from scratch (for the umpteenth time), and that was the version that got me my agent and then quickly sold. But I rewrote it again after that, so even the final version that became a real finished book is quite different.

  From the start, readers get the sense that this novel, though realistic, is very much hovering between fantasy and realistic fiction. Did you know from the onset that you wanted to write a book in the magical realism genre? Or did the categorization happen once the book was written?

  I think of this book as “contemporary with magical elements” rather than magical realism, since the bit of magic that exists in the book is not in response to oppression and colonialism, which is how the magical realism genre was born. The version of the book that sold had actually braided together two time lines—one in a fantasy world, and one in the contemporary real world. I tried really hard to make that work, and I guess that version was something more along the lines of a portal fantasy. When I revised it after selling the book, I decided I wanted to strip out the fantasy world since it wasn’t working quite the way I’d intended. That was when I moved all the magic into the real world, and the book became more of a ghost story.

  Leigh sees the world through colors, and that motif is seen throughout—from her paintings to her conversations with Axel (her best friend and love interest). What inspired you to weave this through the narrative?

  I’ve been asked this question many times, and I’ve never really been sure of the answer. The character of Leigh didn’t exist until 2015—and when she appeared in my mind, I knew immediately that she was an artist and thought of everything in terms of colors. Looking back on it now, my husband has some slight synesthesia tendencies, and I think around the time that Leigh arrived in my head, I was remembering the way he’d described certain short stories of mine using colors. The first time he ever told me a story of mine “felt really orange,” I was incredibly baffled—but in 2015, as I was trying to understand the grief that I was processing myself, and giving that experience to my main character, the use of colors to describe feelings and experiences suddenly resonated.

  The format of the book is also complex. We have flashbacks, alternating time lines, and possible time/memory travel via magic. How did you keep track of all of the threads?

  Oh gosh. It was a little bit of a nightmare at times. I used Scrivener, and within my Scrivener file I color-coded the chapters religiously. I also used color-coded index cards, and would stick them all over an empty wall in my bedroom to map out the threads, and to rearrange pieces of the story.

  The food passages are especially memorable. Did you have to do any extracurricular research to get that aspect just right? What other kind of research did you do for this book?

  I mostly put in foods that I myself like (or used to like, back when I wasn’t a vegetarian). I grew up eating very traditional Taiwanese foods cooked by my mother, so it wasn’t hard to just think about how she or my grandmother or my aunts would cook and plate something. And although I’d been to Taiwan multiple times, I did also visit again on a research trip specifically to help me sharpen the details of this book. That included many extremely crucial trips to night markets, where I ordered a lot of food and tasted it all—for verisimilitude’s sake, of course.

  On that same trip I visited many temples and spent a lot of time talking to people about Buddhism and Taoism. I was raised Buddhist, and I do consider myself religious, but I’m not one of those people who studies the scriptures and goes to temple regularly. I wanted to be respectful to Buddhism and Taoism, which are such important parts of the culture in Taiwan, and so while I was there I observed a lot of religious events and spoke to several monks and nuns.

  I also interviewed a lot of people for this book. From the start, the main character was biracial, so I spent a lot of time interviewing biracial friends and friends of friends—I wanted to be respectful to that identity and experience. I also interviewed members of my family extensively, to try to understand their instincts and perspectives. There are definitely significant cultural influences in the way they think about life and mental illness and grief, compared to how I think about those same things, and I wanted to capture the nuances as best I could.

  Mental health, and its stigma, is an important theme in this novel. Why do you think it’s so relevant for teens and their families?

  There isn’t enough conversation about mental illness. The stigma around it prevents people from seeking help, and it also prevents people from being able to recognize just how dire certain situations might be. It’s absolutely crucial that we normalize the conversation—that we reach a place where we can talk about mental health the way we talk about physical health.

  Which protagonist did you identify with most? Which one was the most difficult to write?

  I identify a lot with Leigh. I didn’t mean to put so much of myself into a character, but over the years as the story became more personal and more important, I couldn’t really help myself. Pieces of me sort of leaked out of my fingers and into her character. The most difficult to write was probably her mother, in part because I was dealing with my own grief from having lost a family member to suicide, and in part because it was difficult to find the right balance and nuance with her depression.

  What are you working on next?

  I’m working on a couple other young adult novels right now. The one that will likely come out next deals more specifically with the cultural identities of Asian American kids whose parents emigrated from Taiwan. That’s something I touched on so subtly in my first book that I found myself needing to explore it more loudly and explicitly.

• American Booksellers Association - http://www.bookweb.org/news/indies-introduce-qa-emily-xr-pan-103595

  An Indies Introduce Q&A With Emily X.R. Pan
  Posted on Friday, Mar 16, 2018
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  Indies Introduce logoEmily X.R. Pan is the author of The Astonishing Color of After (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers), an Indies Introduce Winter/Spring 2018 young adult debut and a Spring 2018 Kids’ Indie Next List Top Ten pick. Pan, whose parents immigrated from Taiwan, grew up in the Midwest and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. She holds a BS in marketing and international business from NYU’s Stern School of Business and an MFA in fiction from NYU’s creative writing program.

  Kristen Beverly of Half Price Books in Dallas, Texas, served on the bookseller panel that selected Pan’s book for the Indies Introduce program. “‘Astonishing’ is the perfect description for this book, which follows Leigh from America to Taiwan after her mother’s death, where she meets her grandparents for the first time,” said Beverly. “I was stunned by the beautiful and engaging writing in this book; the story consumed me from start to finish. It’s hard to believe that this is Emily X.R. Pan’s debut novel, especially with the perfectly executed, deep, and complex themes.”

  Here, Beverly and Pan discuss the author’s writing on those themes, including depression, suicide, culture, and identity.

  Kristen Beverly: The Astonishing Color of After starts with Leigh’s mother appearing to her as a red bird. Where did you get the inspiration for that red bird?

  The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. PanEmily Pan: In Buddhism, there’s this idea that when someone dies they have a transition to make, whether that’s going to be reincarnation or something else, and sometimes their spirit might linger while that transition is still being determined. That’s the part of losing a loved one that I have watched my family fixate on the most — the uncertainty, and the rules around it. For example, you’re not supposed to cry loudly, for fear that the one lost will hear your grief and be distracted, and it’ll make it harder for them to transition to a better place. I think the bird arrived in my head as my way of visualizing that limbo. There’s the obvious freedom of being able to take flight — but the bird is still trapped in our world, with a physical body that can be seen and heard.

  KB: Did you come across any good resources for people struggling with depression or suicide while you were writing your book?

  EP: Definitely — there’s a section at the back of my book listing resources like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, and other organizations doing good and important work. I also have resources for those who have lost a loved one to suicide, like the Alliance of Hope, which felt just as important to me. There’s this terrible stigma around mental illness that makes it hard to talk about it, and I think a lot of people don’t think about how that’s true for the survivors, too.

  KB: A good portion of the book takes place in Taiwan. Were you able to travel there to research the land and the culture?

  Emily X.R. Pan, author of The Astonishing Color of AfterEP: My extended family is in Taiwan, so I’d visited a few times growing up, but I did also specifically make a research trip in 2016 in order to capture the details more sharply. It was important to me that I walk — literally — in the steps of my characters and see and hear and taste and touch all the same things they did. It also really made the book that much more meaningful for myself.

  KB: What has been your favorite part of the experience of being a debut author?

  EP: Hands down, the best part has been seeing people reading the book (via social media and whatnot) and getting those readers’ reactions. Nothing is more amazing than when I hear that a reader really, really understands exactly what I was trying to communicate. People have remarked upon the handling of depression, and the biracial identity, and talked about how that was important to them — they have no idea how incredibly important it was to me, and so it’s so rewarding and validating to hear that.

  KB: What books are on your nightstand right now?

  EP: I’m currently savoring Picture Us in the Light by Kelly Loy Gilbert, who is truly a genius. One of the next books on my nightstand I’m really looking forward to is an advance reader copy of Monday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany Jackson. I also was just reading Nova Ren Suma’s newest book, A Room Away From the Wolves, which comes out this September and is absolutely fantastic.

• Literary Rambles - http://www.literaryrambles.com/2018/01/emily-xr-pan-interview-and-astonishing.html

  EMILY X.R. PAN INTERVIEW AND THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER GIVEAWAY
  Happy Monday Everyone! Today I’m excited to have debut author Emily X.R. Pan here to share about her YA THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER that releases 3/20/18. It sounds like a super compelling story with a setting in Taiwan, contemporary themes, diversity, mysteries, and a touch of magic. This is definitely on my TBR list.

  Here’s a blurb from Goodreads:

  Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.

  Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her grandparents. And as she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.

  Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.

  Hi Emily! Thanks so much for joining us.

  1. Tell us about yourself and how you became a writer.

  Thanks for having me! I’ve told stories all my life. I guess it’s sort of in my blood, and in the way I was raised: My mom is also a writer, and I grew up with my dad making up bedtime stories on the spot instead of reading to me from books. Once I was old enough to have ideas of my own, we made up the stories together.

  2. Awesome how you come from a family of writers. Where did you get the idea for your story?

  It started with my grandmother, who’s had many incredible (and often stranger than fiction) life experiences—I wanted to capture those in a novel. So I began with a character based on her, and then ended up reframing the story through the eyes of her teenage granddaughter…and it all grew from there. And of course, it completely changed itself, because books have minds of their own.

  3. Yes, that is a strange think about stories--their own mind and opinions on where a story should go. Your story is set in Taiwan. How did you research the places where Leigh travels to in Taiwan?

  Even though I had been to Taiwan multiple times, I made a special research trip specifically so that I could visit all the places Leigh goes. There was quite a lot that I was rewriting from scratch in order to make some giant structural changes, and my trip ended up guiding the story in several parts where I hadn’t yet worked out exactly what needed to happen.

  4. I love this part of your blurb: “Alternating between real and magic, past and present, friendship and romance, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, and love.” How were you able to bring so many issues and emotions into your story?

  This question sort of made me laugh, because I didn’t do any of it intentionally. As I mentioned before, I began with my characters. I worked to pin down who they were, and what was important to them, and it all just spun out from there. I wanted the emotions and experiences in the book to feel real, so I guess the additional facets carved themselves out from my seeking that verisimilitude—things in life are rarely ever simple and clean.

  5. I read that your book started out as an adult literary/historical novel. What made you decide that it needed to be a YA story instead and how did you go about changing and revising it? I read that it went through about seven more revisions once you made the switch to a YA story. Share a bit about your revision process.

  I never set out to write a specific age category or genre—I was always simply trying to rewrite it in a way that worked best for the story. So it wasn’t like I sat down and decided, “Oh, I guess this’ll be young adult instead.” I tried many styles and many voices, and when I found the one that worked, it was with a teen protagonist and a YA voice.

  The way I revise changes based on which part of the process I’m in. If I’m early on in a project, I usually just end up redrafting again and again from scratch. Like, literal scratch. Blank page. Not even looking at what I wrote before.

  If I’ve reached the point of believing in the version I’ve got, then most commonly what I end up doing to improve the book is “re-outlining” the whole draft—writing a breakdown of each chapter in bullet points in order to get a bird’s eye view of the whole novel. From there I can much more easily spot pacing issues, and clashing plot points, and where the emotional logic goes wrong. Then I write color-coded notes to myself for what changes to make, and I go through the entire novel in multiple rounds, focusing on a specific category of changes with each pass, until I feel like I’ve made all the changes I need. At that point I try to put the book aside and take a break, maybe work on a different story, do some relaxing, and then I come back and do it all again, starting with another round of re-outlining. Rinse, lather, repeat, until I’ve solved all the problems I can pin down myself. Then it’s ready for feedback from another pair of eyes.

  6. I really admire your willingness to so dramatically revise and change your story so much to make it the best it could be. And I've done the color coding for revisions too. One of the most compelling things I’ve read about THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER is how emotionally gripping it is. Share how you were able to delve into and express Leigh’s emotions and grief in such a compelling fashion. What advice do you have for other writers?

  Well, I’m grateful to hear that people find it emotionally gripping! I’m not sure I could reverse

  engineer my brain or process to tell you how I did it. I would guess that it comes from writing the things that are true to me, that matter to me. It was less about inventing situations / imagining how the characters would feel in those circumstances, and more of me fictionalizing the real things that I’ve experienced, and finding a way to trap those feelings on the page.

  7. Your agent is Michael Bourret. Share how he became your agent and what your road to publication was like.

  I queried Michael just by following the guidelines laid out on the DG&B site. I wrote a pretty lengthy blog post about my querying experience, and that’s archived here for anyone interested: http://exrpan.tumblr.com/post/165342814359/how-i-signed-with-my-agent

  But to jump straight to the end of querying: By some great stroke of luck, I had offers from my top choices, and I spoke to them all on the phone. I was looking for a very specific click factor, and when I spoke to Michael I felt within minutes like he was a telepathic extension of my brain I’d never realized was missing. It was clear he just got my book in a very magical way. He understands my writing and my intentions so well that as I was revising, he was at many times an extremely crucial soundboard for me. Not to mention, he is a class act and simply amazing at his job. So I’m grateful to have him on my team. Oh, oops, I guess this turned into a gush-about-my agent moment!

  As for the road to publication: I signed with Michael, and he gave me big picture notes so I could get to work on sharpening the book for submission, and then I spent about a month revising. After that, he sent the book out, got an auction going, and sold it in two weeks. It was a wild ride, to say the least. That’s not typically the speed of publishing, so I got extremely lucky.

  8. What a great road to agent and publication story. You used to work at Penguin Random House marketing children’s books and have held other jobs in marketing. How has this helped you to develop your social media platform and market your debut book?

  I worked in trade marketing, which is very different from digital marketing. I don’t think my job there helped me with social media—I was already very into social media on my own by the time I started working at Penguin. (Plus, before that I had worked at a tech company doing online marketing, so I think I actually learned more about online platforms from that.)

  But my experience working in publishing has been helpful in that I have a good understanding of the timeline of things happening behind the curtain, and that’s definitely allowed me to stay calmer. And, I really understand just how much is in my control…which is pretty much nothing, aside from the words in the book itself.

  The thing about trying to market one’s book is that unless you’re a celebrity, you don’t have the reach that your publisher has, and you don’t have the ability to influence the key people who decide to stock your book and to push it hard. Regarding marketing online specifically: I think anything you do online is useless unless you’re enjoying it yourself. For an author, good online marketing is born organically out of that.

  9. That's great how you are realistic about the lack of control of so much in a writer's life. It's so true, and I think that many writers can avoid some heartache by understanding this. I noticed on your website that you were at the YALSA’s 2017 Young Adult Services Symposium and the YALL Fest in November 2017. You also have a number of events scheduled in 2018, including the ABA Winter Institute, The Muse and the Marketplace Conference, and the North Texas Teen Book Festival. What made you decide on these events and how we you able to arrange to attend them?

  I simply received invitations and said yes! In some cases the invitations came directly to me and in some cases they came through my publisher. I’m really excited for opportunities to meet more readers and fellow writers.

  10. What are you working on now?

  I’m working on a couple of other young adult novels, and I’m also working on FORESHADOW: A Serial YA Anthology with the brilliant Nova Ren Suma. The latter is a new online venue for young adult short stories, with the intent of boosting marginalized writers and showcasing brand new voices, and we already have some incredible people on board! Check us out at https://foreshadowya.com/.

  Thanks for sharing all your advice, Emily. You can find Emily at:

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/exrpan
  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/exrpan/
  Website: https://exrpan.com/
  Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35604686-the-astonishing-color-of-after

  Emily has generously offered an ARC giveaway of THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follow button if you’re not a follower) and leave a comment through January 27th. If your e-mail is not on your Google Profile, you must leave it in the comments to enter the contest.

  If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. You must be 13 years old or older to enter. This giveaway is U.S.

  Here's what's coming up:

  Wednesday, January 17th I have a Call for Questions for Agent Peter Knapp who will pick questions to answer on Monday, February 5th

  Monday, January 22nd I have an Agent Spotlight Interview with Molly O'Neill and query critique giveaway

  Monday, January 29th I have an interview with debut author Gwendolyn Clark and a giveaway of her YA fantasy INK, IRON, and GLASS

  Friday, February 2nd I'm participating in the For the Love of Books Giveaway Hop

  Monday, February 5th I'll have a Q&A with agent Peter Knapp

  Wednesday, February 7th I have an interview with debut author Brenda Rufener and a giveaway of her YA contemporary WHERE I LIVE

  Hope to see you Wednesday!

• Hello Giggles - https://hellogiggles.com/lifestyle/emily-x-r-pan-novel-astonishing-color-after-depression-asian-moms/

  Emily X.R. Pan wants to change the way we talk about mental health — and Asian moms

  Emily X.R. Pan/Anna Buckley/HelloGiggles
  LAKSHMI GANDHI April 19, 2018 10:30 am
  When readers meet Leigh Chen Sanders, the teenage heroine of Emily X.R. Pan’s new young adult novel The Astonishing Color of After, she has an unusual confession. “My mother is a bird,” she tells readers on the book’s first page. The red bird, which Leigh begins seeing after the death of her beloved mother, Dory, appears throughout Pan’s poetic novel, linking Leigh’s coming of age to the traditions and secrets her mother tried to leave behind.

  In The Astonishing Color of After, Leigh navigates her first serious relationship and burgeoning art career while also watching her mother’s health spiral as her severe, treatment-resistant depression worsens. After Dory dies by suicide, Leigh and her white father travel to Taiwan, where she meets her mother’s side of the family for the first time and uncovers a body of family stories that had been buried for a generation. “The grandmother in the story is basically my grandmother,” said Pan, who was born in the Midwest to Taiwanese immigrant parents.

  As someone who frequently reads young adult novels, Asian American narratives, and stories about the continuing stigma around mental health issues, I was immediately intrigued by the premise of Pan’s debut novel. The tight-knit community that surrounds Dory and Leigh is caring but unable to talk about the effects of mental illness on the Sanders family in an open or meaningful way. In her author’s note, Pan reveals that she personally lost a loved one to suicide and wrote the book in part to make discussions about mental illness less secretive and to make families like Leigh’s feel less alone.

  But in The Astonishing Color of After — which debuted in March and made the New York Times’ Best Sellers list — Pan is also careful to push back on the common narratives about Asian American mothers. Dory fully encourages Leigh’s interest in art and, as a former musician herself, finds joy in playing the piano. For readers of Asian descent who can’t quite relate to the stereotypical image of strict, no-nonsense moms, Dory’s attitude is striking (as is Leigh’s father’s insistence that his daughter be more academically oriented).

  I reached out to Pan to chat about the misconceptions around mental illness, writing from a biracial teen’s perspective, and why she hates the term “tiger mom.”

  HelloGiggles (HG): While I was reading your book I kept wondering if you were also a poet. The way Leigh describes the world around her and her relationship to color and how she envisioned her art felt very poetic to me.
  Emily X.R. Pan (EXRP): That is such a compliment. I actually write terrible poetry, but I do create visual art for fun. Leigh just arrived in my head as someone who loved color. As soon as I pinned down who she was she was fully formed like that. And then when I learned about synesthesia, which is when you feel and hear colors, I thought, “I really like this idea.” My husband actually has it. I’ll give him one of my stories to read and he’ll say things like, “This story feels orange to me.” So I thought it would be great to have her process things through this extra element.

  Little, Brown
  HG: Did your own experiences as an artist affect the way you depicted Leigh’s artistic side?
  EXRP: When I realized she was an artist, I thought that with death and especially a suicide, it’s in our nature to find different outlets to grieve, so she had that. It’s hard to talk about death. We associate it with an idea that is so tragic. And with suicide, there’s also this idea that we can’t talk about it. As I go on my book tour, people will come up to me, and they’ll use this strange voice or their voice will get really low and they’ll say things like, “There was some of that in my family.” But they won’t say what “that” is.

  HG: Some of the most difficult moments are when Leigh spreads her wings — when she experiences her first kiss or paints something she’s proud of — and then goes home and sees her mother suffering.
  EXRP: It’s funny, because people like to ask me about that and they say, “This was clearly intentional, right?” But it wasn’t. I really set out to try to capture a severe case of depression as accurately as I could. Maybe subconsciously I thought about [that parallel], but I wanted to show how living with depression was.

  HG: Leigh’s mother Dory does have a creative side herself. Dory is a talented pianist and came to the United States initially to study music. It’s Leigh’s white dad who wants her to be more career-oriented. I loved that play on the Asian mom stereotype.
  EXRP: I really kind of wanted to turn that on its head. I resent that people think I have a tiger mom — I actually hate the term “tiger mom.” My own mom was an intense mom. She still is. But it is unfair to have this universal idea of what an Asian mom is. I still wanted that tension in there though, so I had the dad be the one telling her that.

  HG: I also think that, growing up in Asian American families, many kids feel like their parents don’t talk about mental health because of cultural stigma. But Leigh’s dad never truly acknowledges Dory’s condition either.
  EXRP: It’s just as much a part of white communities as it is in Asian ones. The taboo and stigma is 5000 times worse in Asian families, but it still exists in white families. But it’s really hard to be in a household that is affected by depression. The most important thing is to try to treat the disease like any other. The language being used around these things is so important.

  It’s so important they we don’t call people “crazy.” Also, the way we talk about suicide needs to change. When we say “committed suicide,” that’s incredibly hurtful. We should say, “she died by suicide” instead. When you use the word “commit,” you are implying they are committing a crime. If that’s the case, is there any surprise that people drop their voices when they talk about suicides? To use language like that prevents people from being willing to talk.

  HG: I was also thinking about the turmoil in Leigh’s house when I read about her fascination with her friend Caro’s family. That fascination felt like something many kids of immigrants experience.
  EXRP: I very intentionally wanted to contrast Caro’s family with Leigh’s. Caro’s family is not a standard family structure — there’s no dad in the family, her grandparents are fine with the fact that Caro likes girls. It bothers me that when there is no mom or dad, people think there’s something inherently wrong with a family. But Leigh’s family has a full and intact family structure, and there are a lot of things wrong. Just because you have the traditional family structure doesn’t mean that everything is hunky-dory.

  HG: Then, when Leigh and her father travel to Taiwan after Dory’s death, Leigh finds that people are apparently fascinated by her.
  EXRP: She keeps hearing herself called “hunxie,” which is “mixed blood.” I ended up scheduling a trip to Taiwan in 2016, and it was the first time I went there as an adult. My husband came with me, and he is white and he has a beard and really curly hair, and he would just get stared at wherever we went. We’d be holding hands and people would be like, “Why is she holding his hand?”

  HG: Leigh never says this directly, but during those scenes I kept thinking of the little game that a lot of children of immigrants play where you ask yourself, “What would I be like if my parent had never left?”
  EXRP: Oh my God, totally. I was born in Illinois, and my parents had friends who had a daughter and we were born a week apart. We were kind of raised like sisters. That family and their daughter moved back to Taiwan because the dad couldn’t find a job here. And I so often after that would have that thought of what could have been if my dad hadn’t found a job when he did.

  HG: What is it like meeting readers who say that they feel connected to Leigh or this book in general?
  EXRP: It’s really amazing. I was nervous because I really wanted to capture the [experience of] biracial identity. While I was researching, I interviewed biracial friends and friends of friends. I would talk to both biracial Asian American people and biracial people in general so that I could talk to them about what was specific as Asian biracial kids and what they felt was universal. So when I meet biracial people who say that they had never felt so seen in a book, that’s what makes being a writer worthwhile.

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Print Marked Items
A lyrical debut that soars
Hilli Levin
BookPage.
(Apr. 2018): p27.
COPYRIGHT 2018 BookPage
http://bookpage.com/
Full Text:
THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER
Little, Brown, $18.99, 480 pages ISBN 9780316463997, audio, eBook available Ages 12 and up
FICTION
By Emily X.R. Pan
What is the color of grief? When 15-year-old Leigh thinks about the answer to this question after her
mother's suicide, she feels empty--translucent. She's an artist, and every feeling she experiences has a
corresponding color.
There's so much Leigh is struggling to understand--the depression that lead to her mother's death, her
frustrating romantic feelings for her best friend, her family's long-buried secrets and her own TaiwaneseAmerican
identity. But the most puzzling of all is how her mother turned into a beautiful red crane, and
what the bird's nighttime visits mean. The first message she can interpret urges her to visit her maternal
grandmother and grandfather (Waipo and Waigong) in Taiwan, where she can immerse herself in her
mother's world of Mandarin and Taiwanese culture as she's always longed to do.
The Astonishing Color of After is Emily X.R. Pan's debut novel, and it gracefully explores the depths of a
teen's trauma without ever feeling overly dramatic or saccharine. The thread of magical realism is woven
through this story so skillfully that the reader will join Leigh in accepting it almost immediately. The story
is centered on a heart-wrenching mystery (how should Leigh interpret the last line of her mother's suicide
note and her spirit's puzzling transformation?), yet Pan's prose is as warm and free-flowing as Waipo's
oolong tea, making this story a surprisingly uplifting one.
REVIEW BY HILLI LEVIN
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Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Levin, Hilli. "A lyrical debut that soars." BookPage, Apr. 2018, p. 27. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532528601/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=48dec900.
Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532528601
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The Astonishing Color of After
Sarah Hunter
Booklist.
114.11 (Feb. 1, 2018): p47+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
* The Astonishing Color of After. By Emily X. R. Pan. Mar. 2018.466p. Little, Brown, $18.99
(9780316463997); e-book, $10.99 (9780316464000). Gr. 9-12.
Leigh shatters after her mother's suicide--who wouldn't?--but when a huge, beautiful red bird appears and
calls her name in her mother's voice, she doesn't think she's hallucinating; she's sure the bird is actually her
mother, and not "some William Faulkner stream-of-consciousness metaphorical crap." When the bird brings
Leigh a box of letters and photos from her mother's childhood in Taiwan, she convinces her white father to
take her to Taipei to meet her mother's estranged parents for the first time. There she digs into her family's
past, visiting her mother's favorite places and keeping an eye out for the bird, which grows ever more
elusive the longer Leigh searches. In Leigh's strong, painterly voice and with evocative, fantastical
elements, Pan movingly explores grief and loss, as well as Leigh's meaningful search for connecdon to her
secretive mother and her exploration of the many facets of her identity. Particularly laudable is Pan's
sensitive treatment of mental illness: Leigh learns many heartbreaking things about her mother's life, but
those moments are never offered as explanations for suicide; rather, it's the result of her mother's lifelong
struggle with severe, debilitating depression. Dynamic, brave Leigh emerges vividly in Pan's deft hand, and
her enthralling journey through her grief glows with stunning warmth, strength, and resilience. --Sarah
Hunter
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Hunter, Sarah. "The Astonishing Color of After." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2018, p. 47+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527771913/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3256538e.
Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A527771913
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Pan, Emily X.R.: The Astonishing Color
of After
Linsey Milillo
Voice of Youth Advocates.
40.6 (Feb. 2018): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2018 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text:
Pan, Emily X.R. The Astonishing Color of After. Little, Brown, March 2018. 480p. $18.99. 978-0-3164-
6399-7.
5Q * 5P * J * S
Transitioning between real and magic, past and present, love and loss, The Astonishing Color of After is a
novel about finding oneself through family history, art, grief, friendship, and love. Fifteen-year-old Leigh
Chen Sanders is reeling following the suicide of her mother. Convinced her mother has turned into a bird,
Leigh travels to her mother's native Taiwan to meet her grandparents for the first time, hoping to find her
mother, the bird. During her search, Leigh chases after ghosts and uncovers family secrets, all the while
forging a relationship with her grandparents. As she grieves, she must try to reconcile the fact that on the
same day she kissed her best friend and longtime secret crush, Axel, her mother was taking her own life.
This novel is as elegant as it is mesmerizing. The narrative--especially Leigh's grief and guilt--is
heartbreakingly real. Readers will relate to her vulnerability and overwhelming desire to find answers. This
is a truly stellar debut, illuminating not only a family's ongoing struggle with depression, but also the impact
upon those left behind when faced with a friend or family member's suicide. The author's use of magical
realism adds a poignant layer to the writing, providing readers with a haunting yet hopeful reading
experience.--Linsey Milillo.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Milillo, Linsey. "Pan, Emily X.R.: The Astonishing Color of After." Voice of Youth Advocates, Feb. 2018, p.
59. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529357133/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=526ac1b3. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A529357133
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The Astonishing Color of After
Publishers Weekly.
265.4 (Jan. 22, 2018): p86.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Astonishing Color of After
Emily X.R. Pan. Little, Brown, $18.99 (480p)
ISBN 978-0-316-46399-7
In the wake of her mother's suicide, 15-year-old Leigh travels from the U.S. to Taiwan, where she hopes to
come to terms with the tragedy while getting to know the maternal grandparents she has never met.
Convinced that her mother has been reincarnated as a great red bird and eager to understand what happened,
Leigh looks for symbols and meaning in the world around her; a stack of incense sticks grants her visions
that allow insight into her mother's past and family history. At the same time, flashbacks illuminate Leigh's
complicated relationship with her best friend Axel, whom she kissed the day her mother died. Pan's
emotionally charged debut is a compelling exploration of grief and the insidiousness of depression. Her
narrator, an artist by nature, sees the world through a colorful, complicated lens, and the novel is steeped in
its Taiwanese setting. The subtlety and ambiguity of the supernatural elements place this story in the realm
of magical realism, fall of ghosts and complex feelings and sending an undeniable message about the power
of hope and inner strength. Ages 12-up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Astonishing Color of After." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 86. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839862/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=72dd3319.
Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A525839862
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Pan, Emily X.R.: THE ASTONISHING
COLOR OF AFTER
Kirkus Reviews.
(Jan. 15, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Pan, Emily X.R. THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER Little, Brown (Children's Fiction) $18.99 3, 20
ISBN: 978-0-316-46399-7
Grief, regret, and loneliness form the backdrop of a family's life following a suicide, but a path for healing
reveals itself in the form of a magical red bird.
Fifteen-year-old Leigh Chen Sanders, daughter of an Irish-American sinologist father and a Taiwanese
pianist mother, is in love with her best friend, Axel Moreno. The two have much in common: as well as
sharing a passion for art, he is half Filipino and half Puerto Rican and also stands out in their racially
homogeneous school. However, a rift has opened between them since their first kiss coincided with the day
Leigh's mother took her own life. Now left alone with a distant, judgmental father, Leigh is directed by a
red bird she is convinced is her mother to visit her estranged grandparents in Taiwan. There, she seeks out
places that were meaningful to her mother and uncovers long-hidden family secrets. The Taiwanese setting
is enticingly portrayed, and the magical realism of the bird spirit offers transportive flashback journeys into
the family's history. The stigma of mental illness and the terrible loneliness of not being accepted form the
heart of this emotionally honest tale, but the device of having Leigh express her feelings in terms of color is
distracting and adds little to the story.
An evocative novel that captures the uncertain, unmoored feeling of existing between worlds--culturally,
linguistically, ethnically, romantically, and existentially--it is also about seeking hope and finding beauty
even in one's darkest hours. (author's note, resources) (Fiction. 14-18)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Pan, Emily X.R.: THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522642930/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e9bc2e6b. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522642930
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PAN, Emily X.R. The Astonishing Color
of After
Stephanie Charlefour
School Library Journal.
64.3 (Mar. 2018): p121.
COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No
redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
* PAN, Emily X.R. The Astonishing Color of After. 480p. Little, Brown. Mar. 2018. Tr $18.99. ISBN
9780316463997.
Gr 9 Up--Leigh comes home to the unimaginable--her mother, who has always been depressed, has
committed suicide. As her grief swells, Leigh believes in her fog that her mother has not died but her
mother's spirit has now turned into a vivid bird who brings Leigh gifts, both physical and in the form of
memories. Trying to put all the pieces together, her father and Leigh travel to Taiwan, where her mother
immigrated from to the United States after meeting Leigh's father. She has never met her mother's family,
and does not understand why her mother never spoke to Leigh about her parents or her childhood. Seeking
answers for these questions and more, Leigh's father leaves her in Taiwan to stay with her grandparents. The
present-day is woven with flashback memories; Pan's writing takes readers on a journey filled with so much
emotion, color, and such well-developed characters with a touch of magic, readers will come to the ending
drained and fulfilled at the same time. An exploration of grief and what it means to accept a loved one's
suicide, this book's lyrical and heart-rending prose invites readers to take flight into their own lives and
examine their relationships. VERDICT Pan's debut novel is not to be missed. Give this to fans of magical
realism titles and any reader who is battling grief.--Stephanie Charlefour, formerly of Wixom Public
Library, MI
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Charlefour, Stephanie. "PAN, Emily X.R. The Astonishing Color of After." School Library Journal, Mar.
2018, p. 121. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529863627/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a70bc2c0. Accessed 4 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A529863627

Levin, Hilli. "A lyrical debut that soars." BookPage, Apr. 2018, p. 27. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532528601/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 June 2018. Hunter, Sarah. "The Astonishing Color of After." Booklist, 1 Feb. 2018, p. 47+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A527771913/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 June 2018. Milillo, Linsey. "Pan, Emily X.R.: The Astonishing Color of After." Voice of Youth Advocates, Feb. 2018, p. 59. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529357133/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 June 2018. "The Astonishing Color of After." Publishers Weekly, 22 Jan. 2018, p. 86. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A525839862/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 June 2018. "Pan, Emily X.R.: THE ASTONISHING COLOR OF AFTER." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522642930/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 June 2018. Charlefour, Stephanie. "PAN, Emily X.R. The Astonishing Color of After." School Library Journal, Mar. 2018, p. 121. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529863627/ITOF? u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 4 June 2018.

• Tor.com
  https://www.tor.com/2018/03/20/book-reviews-the-astonishing-color-of-after-by-emily-x-r-pan/
  Word count: 1060

  “My Mother Is a Bird”: The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X. R. Pan
  Alex Brown
  Tue Mar 20, 2018 3:00pm 1 comment 1 Favorite [+]

  On the same day Leigh Chen Sanders kissed the boy she’d pined over for years, her mother, Dory, committed suicide. She leaves no note, no reason or explanation, just a cavernous hole in the Sanders’ world. At first the grief is overwhelming. She feels trapped in her childhood home with her distant father and the bloodstain marking her mother’s demise haunting her thoughts. Then, the night before the funeral, Leigh is roused from her nightmares by a huge crimson bird calling her name. She knows immediately the bird is her mother, the whys and hows brushed aside in the face a daughter’s longing for her mom.

  At the behest of the bird, Leigh and her father travel to Taiwan to meet her mother’s estranged family. Desperate to save her mother, to make contact, to be close once again, she digs through old family memories and unearths long-hidden secrets. With the guidance of the bird and a box of magical incense, Leigh is pulled between reality and fantasy until she can no longer tell the difference between them. What she learns on her journey won’t change the past, but may finally put it to rest.

  BUY IT NOW

  There’s a lot going on in The Astonishing Color of After, much of it revolving around the feeling of isolation at being trapped between two states. Americans call Leigh’s half-Taiwanese and half-white background “exotic,” and in Taiwan they call her hunxie or “mixed blood.” In both lands she is othered and never feels wholly connected to either cultural group. In life, her mother lived in the liminal space that is depression, a place smothered in a deep and endless fog of nothingness with rare glimpses of light. On the occasions she clawed her way out, she was stuck between the past life she longed to forget and the present life she could never quite settle into. And in death she is trapped between her last breath and the afterlife. Leigh’s father, too, exists in between—here and there, home and on the road, a parent but not a father. Even her grandparents hover between nursing old wounds and yearning to let go.

  Leigh, an artist, uses colors to describe her feelings—“The urgency and longing wrap around me in swirls of aureolin and caput mortuum violet.”—as if by choosing a color she can better understand what she’s going through. It’s her way of processing and defining. Through Leigh’s emotional, illuminating first person narration, Emily X. R. Pan peels back the layers of her grief to expose the heart at the center. The result is a novel as lyrical as it is earnest:

  “I thought I would be able to sleep after tonight, but instead all I can think about is that feather, and ghosts, and other dimensions. And what’s real.

  And colors.

  I see colors in the dark now. Sometimes they form shapes, or even faces. Sometimes they get angry with me, turn a dirty, boiling crimson. Sometimes they try to soothe me, drawing themselves like crystals in a pale dusty blue.

  I don’t even have to close my eyes. The colors are just there, floating above me, like little truth tellers. Wherever my thoughts go, they follow.”

  Pan is less interested in the reality of Leigh’s experience than in the truths she comes to because of it. It doesn’t so much matter whether or not she really can see visions of the past. What matters is what she learns, what she does, what she becomes afterward. Leigh believes her mother is a bird. It’s not up to us to question the bird’s existence. All we need to do is follow Leigh down her path.

  Through Leigh, Pan takes a long, difficult look at what it’s like to be left behind when someone you love dies. Thankfully she steers clear of victim-blaming or psychoanalyzing Leigh’s mother. She suffers from profound depression until she can no longer carry the weight. It happens, and it’s hard, but I think it’s important to shine a light on it. Fiction can help us deal with the unbearable and provide context for the unfathomable. Pan doesn’t shy away from the awfulness of Dory’s death. She doesn’t sugarcoat or gloss over, nor does she wallow or ogle. She offers little in the way of explanation for why Dory does what she does, but so goes life. We live in a world that rarely gives easy answers; sometimes it’s enough just to ask the question.

  Out of everything, the only ineffective element of the novel for me was Leigh’s fledgling romance with Axel, her half-Puerto Rican half Filipino BFF. Her feelings for him are vast, but other than proximity and that he was nice to her, I couldn’t figure out why she was so into him. I was way more invested in Leigh sorting things out with her relations than in whether or not she was going to kiss some dude again. I don’t mean to make it out to be more flippant than it really is. Her and Axel’s constant circling of each other is central to Leigh’s maturity, so it wasn’t a superfluous subplot. It just didn’t work for me, however I fully expect my opinion to be in the minority for most readers.

  The Astonishing Color of After is a gorgeous, heartbreaking read. For a debut author, what Emily X. R. Pan has achieved here is, well, astonishing. It’s a sad, beautiful book that made me smile as often as I teared up. This is a big, slow-moving novel tackling heavy issues. Pan is in no rush to get to the point. The point will come when everything has been said and done. Just let yourself go with the experience. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

  The Astonishing Color of After is available from Little, Brown Young Readers.

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