You Are Here: Connecting Flights

 Oh, Ellen. You Are Here: Connecting Flights. 2023. 272p. ISBN 9780063239081.

Twelve stories take place at the Chicago airport, and interconnect. A teen is traveling to Thailand with his grandmother, who is bringing the cremated remains of dead husband with her in a case, and he's pretty stressed about crossing the TSA security check point. A Korean-American girl and her two non-Asian fathers are traveling to Korea so she can experience the land she came from, but, not remembering anything about it, she has misgivings about the trip. A girl and her mother are moving back to Korea after a fight between her mother and father in New York City, and she absolutely does not want to leave. A boy in the dining area is harassed by security, and plays his guitar like a god to prove to them that yes, there are Asian guitarists. A boy on a traveling team feels sad about his best friend, who is an undocumented resident and therefore cannot travel.

In You Are Here, twelve Asian-American authors create loosely connected stories that explore what it means to be Asian-American in the United States in an era of Covid and anti-Asian sentiment. Some of the teens in the stories feel divided between their ethnic heritage and their feelings of being Americans. Others have never connected with their Asian side, and are feeling ambivalent about that it means to them. All of them encounter racism and side-eyed looks, and many are confronted with being asked to go back to their country, even though they have lived here for generations. Through it all, universal truths about standing up for oneself and fighting prejudice are discovered.