By Justine Trinh
This probably dates me, but Twilight was big when I was in middle school and high school. It was the book that everyone was talking about; all the cool kids were reading it. Which meant: I had to read it. Yet, once I had, one of my biggest disappointments was the lack of Asian and Asian American vampires and characters. Sure, there was Eric Yorkie (played by Justin Chon in the movies), but none of the main characters/vampires looked like me. As a teenager, I knew implicitly that the book was not about Asian/Americans, but it bothered me, because it implied that someone like me could not be a vampire. With their edgy backstories and superpowers, the vampires were the most interesting characters in the books, from Alice who could see the future, to Jasper who could influence emotions. So, when I read that A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal featured vampires, I just had to read it.
A Tempest of Tea is a vampire heist novel that follows Arthie Casimir, a criminal mastermind. Casimir co-owns Spindrift, a prestigious teahouse by day and an illegal blood house by night, with her brother, Jin. Spindrift becomes both a safe haven for the Casimir siblings and for vampires who are feared by society. However, when the ruling monarch, the Ram, threatens their home, Arthie makes a deal with Laith, one of the Horned Guard tasked to keep order for the Ram, to save Spindrift that requires her to break into the Arthereum, a sinister vampire society. Arthie assembles her crew which includes a forger, a vampire artist, and a captain to infiltrate the Arthereum. However, during the heist, Arthie finds herself and crew in the middle of a bigger conspiracy that goes beyond saving Spindrift.
Within literary works, whiteness is typically considered the norm. When no descriptors are given for a character, the general audience assumes the character is white. This happened in Andy Weir’s The Martian—although Weir envisioned his character, Mindy Park, as Korean, he never describes her or states her ethnicity. Consequently, the movie cast a white actress to play her. A Tempest of Tea is careful to avoid this by listing physical attributes to the characters such as Arthie’s “brown Ceylani skin” and Jin’s “monolid” eyes. While it is unfortunate that these descriptors are necessary, they are so important within representation. As I was reading this book, I could not recall a time during my teenage years where I read a book in which a character had monolid eyes like me.
Additionally, when it is later revealed that Arthie is a vampire, her skin color has always been the same, brown, which differs from the vampiric portrayal of Twilight. In the The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide, Stephenie Meyer states, “Regardless of original ethnicity, a vampire skin will be exceptionally pale. The hue varies slightly, with darker-skinned humans having a barely discernible olive tone to their vampire skin.” Within the world of Twilight, white/pale skin is desired and beautiful, and in order for people/vampires of color to emulate this desired beauty, they lose their brown skin. However, Arthie remains beautiful, badass, and brown regardless of her vampiric transformation; and this distinction of being all three of those things is important especially for young adult readers, which this book is marketed towards. In a doll experiment in the 1940s run by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, young children were asked to distinguish between a black doll and a white doll. The children associated positive traits to the white doll, but when asked which doll was the ugly doll, they would point to the black doll. These feelings of inferiority start at a young age and are internalized to adulthood; having a character like Arthie allows for an alternative figure that speaks against these harmful and untrue narratives.
As seen with the heist film, 21, and the previously mentioned The Martian, Asian characters are all too often whitewashed for a Western audience as it becomes unfathomable that Asian people can be front and center in these situations. This also flattens the Asian characters that appear in the movies as Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira’s characters in 21 are one dimensional tokens and Benedict Wong’s character in The Martian is later subsumed and indistinguishable from the Chinese scientists. However, A Tempest of Tea shows that people of color can hold their weight as main characters. Arthie and Jin are the leaders of this group, not the bumbling sidekick characters. Ultimately, however, what makes A Tempest of Tea compelling and meaningful reading beyond its representation is its nuance and how fleshed out Faizal’s characters are.
Justine Trinh is an English literature Ph.D. student at Washington State University. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with B.A.s in Asian American studies and classical civilizations and a B.S. in mathematics. She then went on to earn her M.A. in Asian American studies, making her the first student to graduate from UCI Asian American Studies’ 4+1 B.A./M.A. program. Her research interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, family and trauma, and forced departure and disownment.