Front Desk
Kelly Yang (2018)
“A ten-year-old Chinese immigrant runs a motel front desk, writes letters to change the world, and discovers that courage is not the absence of fear but the refusal to stop fighting.”
At a Glance
Ten-year-old Mia Tang and her Chinese immigrant parents manage the Calivista Motel in Anaheim, California, for the exploitative Mr. Yao, who pays them next to nothing and forbids them from letting guests stay for free. Mia secretly helps undocumented immigrants hide at the motel, writes letters to magazines and newspapers demanding fair treatment, and befriends Mr. Yao's son Jason, who defies his father's prejudice. When Mr. Yao discovers Mia's secret, he threatens to fire the family, but the motel's immigrant community rallies together, Mia's letter is published, and the Tangs ultimately pool their savings with other immigrant families to buy the Calivista themselves.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Front Desk was one of the first widely-read middle-grade novels to center the Chinese immigrant experience in America through a child protagonist. Published in 2018, it arrived at a moment of heightened visibility for Asian-American narratives and became a New York Times bestseller, entering school curricula nationwide. It won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was selected for numerous state reading lists, introducing millions of young readers to the specific mechanics of immigration, labor exploitation, and racial discrimination.
Diction Profile
Informal first-person child narration with moments of rhetorical formality in Mia's letters — a deliberate split between spoken voice and written voice
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