Rebecca Lim's Tiger Daughter 2ser Book Club

Rebecca Lim is the author of more than twenty books. Her works including The Astrologer's Daughter and the Mercy series and she’s been listed for the PM’s literary awards, the Indies and Aurealis awards. An important aspect of her writing career that I want to highlight; Rebecca is a co-founder of Voices from the Intersection.
Voices from the Intersection is an initiative working to support emerging YA and children’s authors and illustrators who are First Nations, People of Colour, LGBTIQA+ or living with disability.
Maybe you’ve heard of Own Voices writing? It’s where authors from communities write about their experiences (rather than say dominant culture authors writing those experiences). It’s a really important part of our literary landscape because it means we are getting reflections of our whole community, including those people whose voices are often marginalised or not heard.
In that sense Tiger Daughter is an own voices narrative as Rebecca explores the experience of being a child of migrants and trying to balance culture and expectations from two worlds...
Wen and Henry are friends; they are drawn together as the children of migrants as well as by shared dreams of escaping their suburban school and the multiple daily acts of casual racism they face.
Wen loves to read and draw but her father sees these are frivolous pursuits. In his world Wen must be her best, she must achieve even as he undercuts her confidence that she will ever be good enough.
Henry excels in all his subjects except English. And so Wen is his confidant and his tutor. Together they dream of sitting the selective schools exam and escaping to a high school that will nurture their talents and offer them something beyond a world that constantly tells them what they are not.
Tiger Daughter is a vignette - only a small chapter in the lives of Wen and Henry (and in fact I was left wanting more as these characters very quickly become so compellingly real) But it’s a chapter of enormous significance. We see the reverberations, over a week, of a cataclysmic personal tragedy and the ways Wen and Henry must challenge the status quo of their worlds.
The novel has expansive scope; taking in culture and cultural divides within migrant homes, as well as exploring mental health and the ways personal pressures reverberate out into the world.
Even as the themes of the novel seem to encompass some of the larger debates we are concerned with as Australians the story itself is restrained in time and space.
Wen walks to and from her school, the shops and home; a tight circle that seemingly can barely expand enough for Henry’s house or a local party. Wen’s dreams are juxtaposed with the disappointment of her father, who has failed his medical specialist exam. As his world contracts, Wen is casting her eyes out on the wider world she seeks to occupy.
The world is shown as simultaneously threatening and promising. As the titular Tiger Daughter Wen must uncover, or perhaps nurture the strength she will require if she wants the life she dreams of.