Joan Is Okay: A Novel
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A witty, moving, piercingly insightful new novel about a marvelously complicated woman who can’t be anyone but herself, from the award-winning author of Chemistry
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • “A deeply felt portrait . . . With gimlet-eyed observation laced with darkly biting wit, Weike Wang masterfully probes the existential uncertainty of being other in America.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, Vox
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.
Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.
Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.
LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • “A deeply felt portrait . . . With gimlet-eyed observation laced with darkly biting wit, Weike Wang masterfully probes the existential uncertainty of being other in America.”—Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR, The Washington Post, Vox
Joan is a thirtysomething ICU doctor at a busy New York City hospital. The daughter of Chinese parents who came to the United States to secure the American dream for their children, Joan is intensely devoted to her work, happily solitary, successful. She does look up sometimes and wonder where her true roots lie: at the hospital, where her white coat makes her feel needed, or with her family, who try to shape her life by their own cultural and social expectations.
Once Joan and her brother, Fang, were established in their careers, her parents moved back to China, hoping to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland. But when Joan’s father suddenly dies and her mother returns to America to reconnect with her children, a series of events sends Joan spiraling out of her comfort zone just as her hospital, her city, and the world are forced to reckon with a health crisis more devastating than anyone could have imagined.
Deceptively spare yet quietly powerful, laced with sharp humor, Joan Is Okay touches on matters that feel deeply resonant: being Chinese-American right now; working in medicine at a high-stakes time; finding one’s voice within a dominant culture; being a woman in a male-dominated workplace; and staying independent within a tight-knit family. But above all, it’s a portrait of one remarkable woman so surprising that you can’t get her out of your head.
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Community Reviews
3.5-3.75 stars (somewhere in there!)
It took a bit for me to get into this book because I wasn't a huge fan of the stream of consciousness writing, but as it went on, it actually grew on me, as did the main character. Joan was a little hard to connect to at first, and things seemed like it was initially a bit rushed, but it all eventually felt like it settled a bit. Although we both share a culture and Asian parents, her experience of having Asian parents was super different from mine, so I didn't fully connect there. But later, I really started connecting with her and what was going on in her head when she was talking about how she struggled to connect with the people around her in various ways. In a lot of ways, I too feel like I have a lot of difficulty connecting with people at work (though actually this job has been really great, but at least in the past), and I definitely have difficulty connecting with my family.
But the part that I think ended up feeling most impactful for me was the whole situation involving Joan's neighbor and how he kept bringing things over for her and eventually threw a whole ass party in her apartment without telling her about it beforehand because he thought she would be fine with it. At first, I thought he was being super sweet, but it felt more and more intrusive, and when Joan said something along the lines of how she realized she didn't have to change who she was for anyone, even someone who thought that she was uncultured or whatever because she didn't behave in the same ways or do the same things, I was just like /holy shit/ because I totally would have done the same thing.
Also, I definitely do agree with the readers who thought that Joan was on the autism spectrum - there were quite a few hints and things mentioned outside of her narration that made me think that. Also I couldn't quite sum up my description of Joan's narrative voice, but this quote by another reviewer definitely puts how I felt into words: There is a sharp weariness (interesting contradiction), that shapes much of the prose.
And then the last two pages did make me tear up because of Joan's reflections on her dad - my dad also calls me a doctor casually, so that bit really could have been about me and my dad. So overall, the book really rose from a 3 to 3.5 or even almost a 3.75 to me by the end, and I'm definitely glad I read it! :)
It took a bit for me to get into this book because I wasn't a huge fan of the stream of consciousness writing, but as it went on, it actually grew on me, as did the main character. Joan was a little hard to connect to at first, and things seemed like it was initially a bit rushed, but it all eventually felt like it settled a bit. Although we both share a culture and Asian parents, her experience of having Asian parents was super different from mine, so I didn't fully connect there. But later, I really started connecting with her and what was going on in her head when she was talking about how she struggled to connect with the people around her in various ways. In a lot of ways, I too feel like I have a lot of difficulty connecting with people at work (though actually this job has been really great, but at least in the past), and I definitely have difficulty connecting with my family.
But the part that I think ended up feeling most impactful for me was the whole situation involving Joan's neighbor and how he kept bringing things over for her and eventually threw a whole ass party in her apartment without telling her about it beforehand because he thought she would be fine with it. At first, I thought he was being super sweet, but it felt more and more intrusive, and when Joan said something along the lines of how she realized she didn't have to change who she was for anyone, even someone who thought that she was uncultured or whatever because she didn't behave in the same ways or do the same things, I was just like /holy shit/ because I totally would have done the same thing.
Also, I definitely do agree with the readers who thought that Joan was on the autism spectrum - there were quite a few hints and things mentioned outside of her narration that made me think that. Also I couldn't quite sum up my description of Joan's narrative voice, but this quote by another reviewer definitely puts how I felt into words: There is a sharp weariness (interesting contradiction), that shapes much of the prose.
And then the last two pages did make me tear up because of Joan's reflections on her dad - my dad also calls me a doctor casually, so that bit really could have been about me and my dad. So overall, the book really rose from a 3 to 3.5 or even almost a 3.75 to me by the end, and I'm definitely glad I read it! :)
This book is very strange. I'm guessing the main character has some sort of autism spectrum disorder, though that's never discussed. She's weird. The book is weird. Her neighbor is super weird. I can't think of anything else to say about it besides "weird."
Content warning for death of a parent, violence, manipulation, child abuse, medical scenarios, COVID-19, and related topics. I liked this novel, I thought Joan was a really engaging narrator, and I liked how the language echoed Joan's straight-forward style of thinking. I think it's a unique depiction of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and would recommend it!
I love Weike Wang's writing. I remember after I read Chemistry I had that feeling like I had discovered a new band before everyone else, except that it turned out that everyone else actually did notice her writing all at once too. Still I'm a complete fan girl. I loved this one too. There's so much I can relate to as the American-born child of immigrants and I'm hungry for fictional books about the experience of living through 2020. I loved it.
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