After spending her early childhood in Wuhan, China, Laura Gao immigrated to Texas with her family, where she struggled to assert her own identity while staying true to her "messy roots." Chapters cover her years as a Mathlete, basketball player, college student at Penn, and "Baysian" in San Francisco before circling back to Wuhan today and the specter of COVID-19. A graphic memoir to stand beside Almost American Girl by Robin Ha and I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib.

Really excellent, highly readable memoir of the the author, Laura Gao is a Chinese-American immigrant whose early childhood was spent with her grandparents in Wuhan before joining her parents in America. Her formative years were spent moving regularly before the family settled in a small Texas town where Laura struggled to fit in and be as white as possible. Her eventual transition to college and early years of employment begins Laura's efforts to better identify with her cultural heritage as well as come out. The memoir is book ended by rising tides of anti-Asian sentiment and violence as COVID-19 begins to spread across the globe. The narrative is equal parts touching and funny, with lots of playful allusions to video games.