PositiveThe Chicago Review of BooksSusie Yang’s debut White Ivy is focused around issues of identity, belonging, and the inherent anxieties that accompany those who simultaneously seek to conform and hide ... While White Ivy succeeds in making us uncomfortable, Yang is very careful about the political undercurrents of the novel like Ivy’s internalized racism or the kind of stereotypes that are placed on Asian Americans. Careful but not silent—she teases these discussions by placing them in very subtle spaces like when Ivy’s mother—Nan—claims they are different from Roux’s family because \'Baba has a master’s degree\'. But the novel never feels instructive or moralistic. It does not seek to console. Its characters do not concern themselves with being good ... Yang takes a character who is a confessed thief from the first page, and etches her with qualities that turn her into a complex, layered, and unpredictable character.
