This facilitated group discusses books which feature queer
characters/storylines as well as a strong attention to literary craft
and style. March's book is Spinning Tropics by Aska Mochizuki. Spinning Tropics is a lush and evocative story of an intoxicating love affair. Meet Hiro. She's tall, lanky and awkward—a twenty-something Japanese
woman who has decamped to Vietnam from Tokyo to work as a language
teacher. Meet Dung. She's shy, beautiful, and tough—a young
Vietnamese woman studying Japanese, determined to create a better life
for herself and her family. When Dung becomes one of Hiro's
students, they are instantly drawn to each other. For both of them, it
is their first time in love with another woman. But when Konno, an
older Japanese businessman, befriends Hiro, Dung begins to grow
unbearably jealous. What unfolds is a love triangle with very
complicated, ultimately devastating, results. Set against the backdrop
of a Vietnam on the economic rise, debut novelist Aska Mochizuki
vividly brings to life the buzz of motorcycles and the tastes of
Vietnamese coffee and spicy papaya salads; the confines of the
Vietnamese family; the lingering effects of long wars; the rich who
ride the economic wave and the poor who are left behind.
