IQ84

IQ84 is a novel about an Asian-American high school girl with a below-average intellect. She’s not good at math. She plays neither violin nor piano. She probably wants to be a bricklayer or plumber, but her family won’t allow it. They insist she pursue a career in quantum physics or trigonometry despite her substandard smarts. All the kids at her mostly white school mock her for failing to meet the stereotypical criteria pertaining to Asians, even though most of them would kill for an IQ of 84. I am sure there’s a scene somewhere in the book in which the young girl goes on stage for a violin concert and all the other suburban white kids jeer her with kung fu sound effects as she twangs the strings. I hate white kids (it’s okay for me to say this because I used to be one, but not the mean kind. In fact, I was a really sensitive kid. I once invited a boy with Down syndrome to my birthday party and my mom cried because I was so sweet. Italian moms are like that, and now that I think of it, Italians aren’t exactly white. The Irish assholes I grew up with let me know this. To them, Italians were no better than Puerto Ricans. Actually we Italians are sort of a race of our own (the best of all races if you ask us) and speaking of Italian mothers, my grandmother was very prejudice against Asians because the Japanese killed her brother in WWII. She was a very devout Catholic and at her funeral mass an Asian priest showed up and my entire family nearly had a heart attack. He started reading from the Bible with a very thick Asian accent and then everybody in my family started choking with laughter. I am not sure who we were laughing at, Nonna or the priest?).

IQ84 is a coming-of-age tale about individuals who fail to meet cultural expectations. The young black male who can’t play basketball. A white suburban teen stricken with an interesting personality. What it must be like to be such oddballs? Standing in another person’s shoes, especially if you’re a white guy who wears a size 9 and you’re standing in Shaquille O’Neal’s 23’s. This probably pretty much sums up the whole point of the book, and great timing for the publishers to release it around the same time as Jeremy Lin’s emergence in the NBA. An Asian basketball player with skills! Who would have thunk? The white players in the NBA must be so pissed!