Emmy Lou Musgrave's Reviews > Finally Seen

Oh goodness. This book was cute and so devastating all at the same time.
Finally Seen is about Lina, a young girl who, after five year apart, is finally getting to move to the US to reunite with her family. She's a Chinese immigrant coming to post-pandemic America. Throughout this whole book, we get to see some of the hardships that she deals with in China, as well as the backwards bullshit in America (pardon my language but this book made me angry). Her father works for a curmudgeonly asshole of an farmer and her mom, who lost her job during the pandemic, is working at home making bath bombs on Etsy. The piece of shit mooch of a landlord is demanding close to $4000 in back rent, so Lina's family is doing everything possible to make that money.
Lina and her sister are permitted to go to fancy arts school since her dad works within the district area, but they are both told constantly to "be invisible". At this school, Lina meets some of the best people and some of the worst. The Librarian (who are always awesome) sets her up with tons of great graphic novels and she's able to see herself in these books. They make her feel seen. Then, of course, one of the books she loves most is being challenged with a book banning because some racist little girl was upset that the class called her out on her racist comments about the book. So her rich ass bitch of a mother petitions to get it banned.
At the end, things work out, but this book had me in tears at the injustice that a damn child had to face. Don't even get me started on the stupidity of books banning, god forbid someone experiences something that isn't about whiteness in some way or another. Being written by an immigrant, Kelly Yang makes this book highly personal and I have no doubt that the real truth about what her family went through is worse.