Golden Girl — Kailin Gow

It is the year before her last year of junior high as an 8th grader, and 14 year-old, almost 15 Kailin is helping her best friend, Marcus, a black gay friend from the UK, practice basketball drills so he can make the tryouts for the basketball team for 9th grade. He agrees to try out only if she agrees to try out for the cheerleading team. Together they agree to try out for teams known to never have the first Asian American girl on the squad and black guy on the basketball team in a mostly white neighborhood in 1980s Southern California.

At the same time, Kailin is suddenly bombarded with her own culture shock trying to be both American and Taiwanese. But most surprising of all, she experiences what it is like to have a crush, and then suddenly, what it was like to be the object of a crush.... Golden Girl is a fictional memoir that is heavily based on author Kailin Gow, who is known as a digital book pioneer, an author success story on Amazon's homepage, and for her fictional and non-fiction books featuring a strong female main character. Growing up in Southern California near Hollywood has its privileges and fun stories that are iconic to the area. Growing up as a teen with Taiwanese heritage is another thing. If you like Fresh Off the Boat, Crazy Rich Asian, and other Asian-American lit that portrays Asians in America as somewhat crazy, you will enjoy this one...from a female point of view and from an author known for standing up to the norm. Be prepared for breaking of stereotypes, kung fu influences, references to Bruce Lee, and hilarious stories that are true, but was made fiction here to protect the guilty and embarrassed. Golden Girl may be the one to shattered your not-so-concrete view of what being teenaged and Taiwanese means growing up in Southern California near Hollywood in the 1980s.

*** Golden Girl is TV-14 because Kailin's Teenage years were not so TV-MA rated as her imagination and grown up romance books. If you are looking for higher steam stuff, then look for her New Adult books. Otherwise, this is a book that her mom could read, but Mama Lucy loves her steamy ones too.