By Maureen Tai, 31 July 2024

Whenever we’re in Toronto, we make a beeline for Little Island Comics, a small bookshop near Kensington Market that is a veritable treasure trove of comics and graphic novels for younger readers. This summer, I wonder how many more years of these visits remain as my kids morph into teenagers, It seems apt given my mood that I pick up Age 16, an evocative and deeply moving coming-of-age memoir of three generations of Chinese women, bound by blood but separated by time, place and circumstance. It reminds me that you never stop being a mother to your child, or a daughter to your own mother. Joy or bitterness, regret or remorse, these can be inherited and passed down like any other heirloom, with consequences that feel inevitable, deserved even. Until someone is able to break free from the chain of history.

In Age 16, that someone is 16-year-old Linney (or Rosalind). The book starts in the year 2000, with lively, jump-off-the-page illustrations coloured in shades of purple. Linney, who lives in Toronto with her single, working mother, is struggling with weight issues. She has a fraught relationship with her mother, Lydia, and to top it off, she needs to find both a date and a dress for her upcoming high school prom. We then segue into the past, into Lydia’s life as a teenager. Set in 1972 Hong Kong, the pages are now a burnt orange hue. Lydia is also a child of a single, working parent, Mei Laan. Lydia dreams of becoming a dancer but is rebuked at each turn by her harsh and critical mother. As the pages turn teal, we are whisked even further into the past, to China in 1954, where we meet Mei Laan, a pretty teenage girl who longs to escape from her hard village life. A harbinger of things to come for herself and her generations after, Mei Laan grows up in a fatherless household, and, in comparison to Linney and Lydia, faces a bleak future of limited options. When a promising marriage proposal presents itself, Mei Laan gleefully grabs the opportunity to escape, but it is not the happy ending that she envisages. The effects of this devastating truth ultimately ripple through to her daughter, Lydia, and to her granddaughter, Linney.

The life stories of the three teenagers are carefully illustrated, gently spliced, and thoughtfully woven into a poignant, seamless masterpiece of intergenerational sacrifice, of desperate immigration, of frustrated dreams. The last page has all three colours – purple, orange and teal – represented on the same page, a testimony to the enduring, redemptive and healing power of love. A wonderful read for any teen (in particular of immigrant parents) and a keeper for any bookshelf.

Ages 12 and up.

NOTE: Thank you for reading my reviews! I’ll never take this website down, but in the interests of streamlining, from 1 January 2025, I’ll be posting new reviews on my writer website, www.maureentai.com, where I post lots of other bookish extras. See you there!