*CONTENT WARNING; racism, homophobia, manipulation, mention of miscarriage, alcohol (underage drinking)*
Last Night at the Telegraph Club is less about the romance between Lily and Kath but more about Lily trying to grasp her identity as a Chinese American lesbian in the 1950s, which I want to get across from the get-go.
That, however, does not mean their romance ripped me into pieces.
In the prologue, four years before the main story (1950), thirteen-year-old Lily Hu (胡麗麗) and her childhood best friend Shirley Lum (林雪莉) attend the Miss Chinatown Contest with their families. I’d say this one chapter is the summary of the entire book in one way or another as we see Lily becoming aware of skin and bodies and the interactions between her and Shirley.
When Lily stumbles upon an ad for male impersonator Tommy Andrews’ performance at the Telegraph Club (1954), she is mesmerized, not quite understanding why. But she keeps the clip along with a few others in her copy of The Exploration of Space, a book about the world beyond earth that she has made a goal to explore. The way that I took her placing the clipping in this book is all her dreams are kept in one place. As the new school year starts, there are only two girls left in Advanced Math—Lily herself and Kathleen Miller, who dreams of becoming a pilot. Their orbits never coincide until this very moment, and it makes all the difference.
Hearing the name “Kath” makes me sigh now, and that’s how much I love the character. She is sweet and loving and I desperately wish we were able to spend more time with her instead of with Shirley. But of course, it is the preciousness of the scenes that makes everything more delicious. Told through Lily’s third-person point-of-view, we watch how she and Kath first bond over mathematical and scientific endeavors—Lily wanting to pursue a career in space science and Kath wanting to be a pilot—and their friendship slowly grows into something neither could comprehend.
In-between each part, there are flashback chapters told through the POVs of the older generation—Lily’s mother, father, and aunt. These bring the historical stories of that generation into the plot, the generation plagued by wars and PROC overtaking China in 1949. The generation that couldn’t go back to their homeland if they wanted to.
Last Night at the Telegraph Club is a very introspective story where Lily talks little and she goes about mundane things while thinking and having random thoughts. It was very relatable for me and I acutely feel every breath Lily took and every panic that shot through her head. It’s amazing how much I could feel through Lily, through Lo’s words. The story is beautiful, telling a fictionalized generational history of queer Chinese American women, a group often erased in historical records, in the 1950s San Francisco through Lily Hu’s. In this book, Lo gave voice to people like Lily Hu, and all the people who came before us (as in queer people).
I absolutely love the Cantonese and Mandarin scattered throughout the story. In print, some of them were written in Traditional Chinese characters and not their romanized forms. I don’t think I’ve ever read any English books where I see Chinese characters in them. Zeller’s narration is also incredible. I love all the voices she gave the characters, the purposefully subtle accents for Joseph and Judy, Lily’s father and aunt, and how she slips seamlessly between languages. It was phenomenal.
The main romance is the most gripping for me, but there are also so many important elements in the book—Chinese American culture, anti-communism, queer gatherings, etc.—all in the 1950s. I love that the older gay women, despite treating Lily as an exotic novelty that screams volumes about the racism in the queer science than ran rampant in the 50’s, are kindhearted and shared their experiences of what it means to be queer. The racism in the 1950s, still prevalent in 2022, is evident in everything Lily and her family go through. I wish I could say that Last Night at the Telegraph Club is very much a story in history and the present world isn’t like that anymore but I couldn’t. It pains me how everything is still relevant now.
Lily and Kath. I don’t know what to say except that my heart weeps and sings for them. I imagine them staring into each other’s eyes whenever possible, unblinking with hope and love and tenderness.
Despite all of this, Last Night at the Telegraph Club is full of love and levity. While it is true that a part of Lily is always disconnected from her environment, as the only lesbian she knows in Chinatown and the only Chinese girl at the Telegraph Club, the love she feels for her home and the freedom she experiences at the Telegraph Club matter just as much as the fear and the pain. Though Lo makes it clear that it is not easy to be Chinese, a lesbian, or a Chinese lesbian in this time or place, it is not simply a life of prejudice or hiding or suffering. She presents a multifaceted view of all parts of Lily’s identity, with a strong feeling of community and hope, and it is those aspects that make this novel really shine.
Reading the title of the book still gives me an indescribable ache, like something physically pressing into my sternum, just as the name Kath makes me sigh. I wish we had gotten more at the ending but I also see the necessity of stopping where it did. There is hope and joy and yearning. Lily and Kath will live in my head where all their dreams become reality as they stay at each other’s side to this day, both reaching for the sky.