Crazy Rich Asians

I read it and the sequel (didn’t get to the third) before the film came out. I had been struggling to read outside of academic work for college classes, but I found Crazy Rich Asians easy to get through, it was like reading a “trashy” reality show? Or like gossip girl. And the prose was just approachable so I finished it very quickly.

I thought it was alright, I don’t know if I’d like reading it now. That’s probably part of why I haven’t bothered trying to start the last one.

I lost my parents within months of each other, both from chronic illnesses. I read all the Crazy Rich books as a distraction during that time. They were a welcome escape from reality, I needed something like that ! I did enjoy them and liked the movie too

I won’t try to defend the books because I genuinely feel that if someone doesn’t like something, they shouldn’t feel pressured into liking/agreeing with it. I for one really don’t like the Lord of the Rings books and hate it when people try to pressure me into reading them! As a big fan of the CRA trilogy, though, I’ll try to answer your questions:

**First, do we really know much about Rachel other than she’s a middle-class Chinese-American girlfriend, a good person, and not crazy rich?**

Not really! But I think that’s part of what makes the first book interesting. It’s kind of nice to have a relatively thin backstory so that we don’t get too hung up on specifics. You do learn much more about Rachel’s family in the second and third books, which makes for a very intriguing storyline.

We learn through the book that Rachel has a very strong connection to her single mother who has had success as a realtor in silicon valley, that she places a lot of value in her job as a teacher, and her advanced education in economics. Thus, Rachel has been taught that it can be a point of pride to succeed without a large family, become educated and work in blue- and white-collar trades. That’s about all we learn of her, though. The whole point of the book is to experience the world through the eyes of someone who doesn’t know how to navigate it, so having a relatively blank-slate character is super helpful in this regard. Those of us who aren’t crazy rich (which I think is something like 99% of us..!) get thrown into the deep end without swim fins, just like Rachel does.

Rachel thinks she understands economics on a macro level, but when it comes to her experiences in southeast Asia, she finds herself completely out of her depth. Her understanding of how money works is put to the test when she’s confronted with how the HNWI’s spend with abandon. The opulence and extreme displays of wealth are meant to be jarring in much the same way that they were in American Psycho (which also satirizes the unbelievable wealth of finance yuppies in the 1980’s). We’re not supposed to want to identify with the vast majority of wealthy characters, because their spending is utterly vapid and unfulfilling. Rachel is shocked by all of this but does a good job of staying true to her beliefs and not getting seduced by the lifestyle.

**To answer your other question, whether or not the book stands up in 2023 compared to 10 years ago?**

IMO, I think it does, especially now that there has been much more dialogue about how the wealth divide impacts people around the world. I also think that the discussion about how north American social structure compares to East Asian social structure will always be a very interesting touchpoint. Especially when an author is writing characters who come from families that are culturally a mixture between East and West.

In terms of the money aspects of the book, I think we all learned that the pandemic made the rich richer and the poor much, much poorer. I think we can all become even more disgusted with the flippant behavior of characters in the CRA books than we may have felt even before the pandemic. I thought the first book did a good job of showing that money can be as much of a benefit as a curse for people. Rich people don’t just pay for clothes, jewels, and cars, but their absurd wealth also buys access and provides a means to climb socially. But at the end of the day all the money in the world can’t buy real, true relationships and friendships.

The book(s) however cover more than just name-brand dropping, and what it’s like to live as a rich person in Singapore. Rachel’s experience becomes a one-two punch into the reality of what it’s like to exist in a completely different social structure, driven by filial piety and obeying elders. This is why I think the books could be considered timeless, because there simply aren’t enough stories written about characters who come from mixed-cultural backgrounds, who are thrust into worlds that cause them to question their own thoughts about where they belong, or how they form families (chosen or biological).

The juxtaposition between Rachel’s family and the families in southeast Asia is important to note, because it shows some similarities, but how different her values are to those of the uber wealthy. Where north Americans typically find self-worth in their ability to be independent and self-made, the families that Rachel meets and begins to socialize with see the collective wealth of the insular family as the most important value. Nick is pressured by his family to date and marry within his social class because that’s what’s done in Singapore. He is the heir, and he has to protect his realm. That’s all he knows, until he moves to the US and dates Rachel.

Throughout the book, we learn that maintaining the family dynasty goes beyond wealth and class. Many of Eleanor’s friends and family members have strained relationships with their children because they believe that family money and unity should be a priority over self-worth, education, and finding love with the person of their choice. Rachel’s relatively common last name (Chu) is a sticking pint for folks in Nick’s family–is she a ‘Taiwan plastics Chu’ or from some other Chu family of great wealth and prestige? The younger rich generations only seem to know how to identify each other from which industry their family’s wealth is derived. Making a name for yourself is all but impossible because ‘new’ money has no clout in a city full of historical wealth. Astrid’s husband is a great example of how even people born in Singapore struggle with this. He is still considered an ‘outsider’ of the family even if he married into insane wealth, all because his family of origin isn’t from the same social or monetary caste as his wife’s.

Nick’s family sees Rachel as a threat not just because she’s ‘poor’ and they think she’s a ‘gold-digger’ but also because her values are directly contradictory to those that Nick grew up with. Rachel’s short stint of time alongside Nick’s extended family in Singapore makes this glaringly obvious. Even without the brand name-dropping, the core theme of the book is that Nick has thrust Rachel into a society where displays of wealth are so commonplace that they become increasingly more jarring and unsettling, but also they run parallel to the theme of familial piety and duty, which challenge Rachel’s core values about what it means to be family.

In the end I do hope that you might give the second and third books a chance, because they are a delightful trilogy with tons of great sub-plots. The characters are delightfully well-written, and it’s also nice to read literature that covers the lived experience of characters who have to find a way to straddle the world they know and a world that’s completely foreign. Happy reading!

My sibling read the series and was excited for the movie to come out–and immediately after watching it, they told me they’d understand if I couldn’t read it, too. They explained it thus:

The movie is simply a better medium for a lot of the storytelling as far as showing how rich the characters are. You don’t have to be presented with every single brand name to see that the characters have bought the most expensive items. Everything is high-end and expensive and you can tell based on how they interact with the people serving them and how the people they consider friends watch and speak about them. You simply can’t capture that in a book without putting the brand names and their wealth front and center, which, yes, is annoying. There’s a “show, don’t tell” rule when writing that authors usually go to, but these characters are simply *so* rich, and their day-to-day lives so intrinsically entwined with their richness, that there’s really no other way *to* show them in a way that we, people who can barely imagine that wealth, would understand the impact.

I’ve tried to read the first book and I keep putting it down because I keep thinking yeah, this would be way better as a tv show or a sequel movie or something. I wouldn’t have to read BRAND NAME this and BRAND NAME that. I could just see them shopping or holding their fancy stuff.

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The food descriptions were the best part of the book.

I’m from Singapore. I found the two books a really fun read! To each their own of course; not serious literature or anything.

I enjoyed the books, but I frequently read across genres and enjoy light and easy things. I love the use of language in it- the combination of all of the languages commonly spoken in Singapore with the slang explanations kept me really engaged.

It’s definitely a celebration of conspicuous capitalism that doesn’t resonate at this moment but the cultural piece and the author’s authentic connection to the culture made it work for me.

You made me want to reread them 😂

I think I understand how you’re feeling, but personally, I definitely enjoy a bit of shallowness here and there. It’s an easy go-to for escapism.

Of course, I also enjoyed the Shopaholic series in my early 20s, Gossip Girl in my teens, so that tells you all you need to know!

Do you do palate cleanser in between heavier reads? What do you like?

Grew up on bollywood movies. This is pure kdrama/bollywood shit.

Rich family won’t let poor in.

China Rich Girlfriend is the best book in the series but you’d hate it if brand mentions irk you.

I think it really depends on how much into fashion you are, because all the name dropping helped a lot with immersion for me, like a long-running inside gag.

I also think that the complete tonal shift in the movie adaptation didn’t help. The book is a half cynical, half humouristic, always somewhat fond look at Singaporean/Asian elite circles. Rachel isn’t the main character like she is in the film, she’s just the outsider holding the mirror.
But the movie is almost devoid of the snark in the book (I’m dreading the 2nd book adaptation because that one was just delirious) and made the characters a lot more palatable to “offset” their off-putting materialism (let Astrid be dumb!!!), so the original book characters will feel less sympathetic in comparison.

I read the whole series as a relaxed summer read and really enjoyed. I read it as a social portrait of a class of people I will never ever have any contact with in any way and I found it quite entertaining for that glimpse. I enjoyed the colorful descriptions and the careful and loving details on the food in particular.

And, what I realized especially after watching the movie, the main character (what was her name again? Rachel?) is not important. She has no character what so ever, she is just a blank. She is not interesting, but also not offending or upsetting. She really is just an inoffensive blank screen. There’re quite a few reasons why that is, but I kindly lean towards the “it’s a feature, not a bug” reason: The main motivators for these books is to show the wealth and way of living of this very particular class of people and the places they live in and we see it through her eyes, she is our guide to that world. And her having any sort of own character would just get in the way of the main focus, which are the other people and their way of life. That’s why she has no character and is basically just blank. She is just a guide and shouldn’t distract from what matters, which is everything and everyone but her.

The film gave her an actual character, which they needed to do, because the film is a rom-com character movie and not a social portrait (like the books are).

So, yeah. I enjoyed the books as a portrait of a way of living I will never have contact with. These books are not deep or have some kind of big moral lesson; they just show the live of a particular class of people. Nothing more.