Review: "Uprooted" by Ruth Chan

Uprooted by Ruth Chan
Published September 2024 via Roaring Brook Press
★★★

When she was a teenager, Chan's parents uprooted her: they moved from Toronto to Hong Kong, both for a job opportunity and so that Chan's mother could be closer to her family. Chan didn't want to go: she'd only been to Hong Kong once, years earlier; her spoken Cantonese was shaky; and above all she loved her life in Toronto.

I was eager to read this, because I've read so many books about people migrating from East to West, but so many fewer about people moving from West to East—and with the latter, it's almost always adults who are making the move of their own volition rather than because their parents have made the decision. Plus, I've never been to Hong Kong, and I like reading about places where I've never been.

As a story, it's engaging. As a graphic memoir, it wasn't my favourite—the art is very cartoony, and while there's nothing wrong with that it's just rarely what I gravitate towards in a graphic memoir (or novel). I also couldn't figure out how old Chan was at the time of the story; it's not stated, and while some of the things she mentions (first kiss, etc.) made me think fourteen or fifteen, other things (the way some of the bodies are drawn) made me think ten-year-old. (The author's note tells us that she was thirteen—but that's not until the end! It made sense for the story, but I wished that had been worked into the first couple of pages.)

It was, though, interesting to see how Chan dealt with a character experiencing the world in multiple languages: some parts of dialogue is written in black, others in grey, to denote whether English or Cantonese is being spoken; Cantonese that she didn't understand at the time is written directly in Cantonese. It's effective, and it was also interesting to compare it to The New Girl, which I read on the heels of Uprooted and which took a similar route but with a twist.

Unlikely to return to this one but am glad to have had a chance to read it.