Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte & Ann Xu

Cici loves life in her small town in Taiwan. She especially loves going to the morning market every Saturday with A-ma, her grandmother. She often cooks with A-ma, surprising her mother with things like tsui-kiau. Then one day Cici learns that her family is moving to America, but her beloved A-ma will be staying behind in Taiwan. Cici want A-ma to come with them, but she explains to that it is difficult to get a Green card. A-ma makes Cici promise to wash the rice, and Cici makes A-ma promise she will come visit next year when she turns seventy, which is an auspicious birthday.

Cici and her family move to Seattle, Washington. On her first day of school Cici makes two new friends, red-haired Jenna and Emily. But Cici is humiliated at lunch when her lunch of Taiwanese food attracts the attention of her classmates. As their friendship grows, Cici struggles to fit and and worries about being accepted. She's invited over to Emily's home, along with Jenna. Cici has fun, but when she learns that this was supposed to be a sleepover, she runs into trouble trying to explain this strange American custom to her parents.

Cici misses her old friends in Taiwan but she especially misses her beloved A-ma.Cici and her dad try unsuccessfully to convince A-ma to visit as each holiday comes about; the Lunar New Year, the Moon Festival and the Lantern Festival. Cici knows she has to think of a way to bring A-ma to America. She tells A-ma that it is only three months until her seventieth birthday and that her father would be cheered by her visit. A-ma agrees to come but doesn't know how she will pay for the plane ticket. Cici tells her she will figure that part out and asks her to keep her visit a secret.

Cici's friends try to help, offering suggestions as to how she can raise the money. One day while walking home with Jenna, they spot a sign for a kids cooking contest, Platinum Jr. Chef. The winner will earn a one thousand dollar prize! Cici signs up.

Cici tells her mother about her plan and she is impressed but she warns Cici that her father will be worried if her grades begin to slip. Cici begins practicing cooking so she will be ready for the first round of competition which begins in two weeks.

Can she pull of a win, earn the prize and bring her beloved A-ma to America?

Discussion

Measuring Up tackles some of the sensitive issues many new immigrants encounter as they settle into life in a new country. There is the struggle to be accepted in their new country, while maintaining many of the traditions and beliefs of their home culture. And in the case of many young Asian immigrants like Cici, there is the burden of dealing with intense parental expectations.

LaMotte captures Cici's stress about making friends and fitting in. Cici is not happy about leaving her home and friends in Taiwan but she has no trouble making two new friends. She wants badly to fit in and so she quickly ditches her Taiwan lunches after being teased about her pickled cucumbers looking like worms. Her school mates demonstrate a lack of understanding and knowledge about other cultures. While at Emily's house, Emily believes Cici can't understand English very well and speaks slowly. Her American classmates who learn that she is in a cooking contest,  assume Cici is Chinese, not understanding that there are many different Asian cultures and view Chinese food as "takeout" food and not real food.

But Cici eventually discovers that she and her friends are not so different. When they visit her family home and see the family altar, Jenna explains how her mother lights candles for her Irish grandparents and Emily tells her mother keeps her grandfather's ashes in an urn on the mantlepiece.

Both Cici and Miranda, her partner in the cooking contest are struggling to cope with parental expectations. Miranda's father owns a restaurant and his expectation is that she will someday work there and take over. However, she confides to Cici her big secret, that she doesn't want "to be a great chef or run the restaurant." She tells Cici that "Cooking isn't my thing. It's my dad's" and that she really wants to be an artist like her mother and draw comic books. Cici is surprised because Miranda lives in a large home with a state of the art kitchen and doesn't have the pressure of having to get good marks like she does.Eventually Miranda does tell her father what she wants for herself.

Cici's parents' motto is "good grades, good college, good job, good life". Her parents expect her to get very high marks. When Cici confesses her plan about the cooking contest to her father, he tells her that studying is more important. "But it is important that you spend your time studying. You could eventually be the head of a research lab.You could be better than me. You see that right? It isn't worth a few days of celebration for something that could affect the rest of your life." Cici begins to wonder if she wants what her father for her or if wants of if she wants something very different. She envies Miranda's opportunity to take over her family's restaurant because she wants to be a chef and not head of a research lab.

Two weeks before the final round and instead of focusing on Cici's accomplishment of making it to the final round, her father is concerned about her studying for her math test. When Cici doesn't quite get her usual excellent mark on a math test, she lies to her parents and eventually her father learns about her mark. He insists that she quit the competition, explaining that she must work harder than American students to prove herself. However, Cici manages to convince her dad by telling him how much it means for her to win and bring A-ma to America. Eventually Cici's parents come to see her cooking as an accomplishment, but only after she wins the competition.

While some of the story feels a bit contrived, for example Cici and her friend stumbling last minute onto a cooking contest that offers such a significant (and convenient) prize, the issues tackled in this graphic novel are all too real. Many new immigrants must bridge two cultures while satisfying the expectations of parents and new friends - they must measure up on more than one front.This novel  not only succeeds in highlighting these issues but LaMotte has managed to create and develop a cast of characters that feel realistic and engaging.

Measuring Up is Lily LaMotte's debut graphic novel and here's hoping there will be more graphic novels by this promising author. The story is very much helped along by the lovely illustrations of Ann Xu. The digital illustrations were created by using ink on paper and Adobe Photoshop.

Book Details:

Measuring Up by Lily LaMotte & Ann Xu
HarperAlley      2020
205 pp.