This Place Is Still Beautiful by XiXi Tian (2022). Published by Balzer + Bray (An Imprint of Harper Collins). 368 pages. Hardcover. ISBN-10 ‏ 0063086026 ISBN-13: ‏978-0063086029 PZ7.1. T5462 T h 2022 AURA

When rising high school senior Annalie discovers a racial slur spray-painted on her family's garage door in their small Illinois town, she calls her sister Margaret in New York, and Margaret flies home for the summer, leaving her law internship but bringing her legal mindset. In alternating first person POV chapters, Annalie and Margaret tell the story of their summer, as well as memories of the past. Margaret looks more like their Chinese mother, while Annalie looks more like their white father, who left when she was three, and can pass for white.

High-achieving Margaret broke up with her longtime boyfriend, Rajiv, when her mother made her choose between them on the night of senior prom, and is startled when Rajiv is the other intern at her new summer job. Annalie's ride-or-die best friend Violet, also Asian-American, helps her get together with her longtime crush Thom, a white soccer player, but Annalie finds she can't be herself with him, and when he admits that it was his friends who vandalized her house - after Margaret finds a neighbor's surveillance video footage - he asks her not to tell, putting her in a quandary. Annalie knows Violet would advise her to tell the police, so instead she tells Daniel, a summer visitor from London whose grandfather owns the bakery where Annalie works.

Margaret, Annalie, and their mother all have different reactions and approaches to the incident, as well as the casual everyday racism they face, often in the form of microaggressions. Ultimately, however, their summer together brings them closer, even after a lifetime of not speaking about certain things.

Quotes

Except I found out that being lonely is different than being alone. Loneliness, it turns out, isn't quite as easy to escape. (Margaret, 31)

The world is full of ugliness. I know that. It doesn't mean I want to decorate my front door with it. (Margaret, 55)

Part of growing up, I think, is realizing that not everything your family does is normal or acceptable. (Margaret, 108)

"They think me talking publicly about racism is more offensive than an actual hate crime....I'm not in the business of keeping people from feeling uncomfortable." (Margaret to Rajiv, 111)

"You can't count on anything these days except yourself." (Margaret to Rajiv, 156)

It's easier to imagine than to know for sure. Your imagination is usually less depressing. (Annalie, 168)

...wondering why it is so hard for each of us to say what we really feel to the people who matter. (Annalie, 171)

"I think people can have different opinions about the best way to confront problems." (Daniel to Annalie, 178)

"I just know how to pick my battles. You pick every battle." (Annalie to Margaret, 234)

What if I tell someone?
What if I never tell anyone? (Annalie, 247)

I guess you can never tell what people do when no one's watching. (Annalie, 257)

It seems to me...that our fears aren't true, or at least, they are never as true as we make them out to be. (Annalie, 317)

I don't know how to distinguish between people who are racist and people who use racial slurs while they're drunk. (Annalie, 330) ( )