Juli Min’s novel Shanghailanders is an inventively told and mesmerizing debut.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“Enthralling . . . Against the backdrop of Shanghai’s elite circles, Min expertly takes readers on a journey backwards through time, unraveling the intricacies of the Yang family members‘ lives through their unique perspectives. . . . In her masterful storytelling, Min captures the essence of life in a rapidly changing city and world, reminding readers that even in times of uncertainty, love, longing, and resilience remain unwavering constants. With its richly drawn characters and thought-provoking themes, Min’s debut is a captivating read that will linger in the minds of readers.”
In her own words, here is Juli Min’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Shanghailanders:
Shanghailanders is the story of a singular family — French-Japanese-Shanghainese, beautiful, brilliant, wealthy, and… falling apart at the seams. Through the chapters that move backward in time and rotate between the family members, we learn about the secrets that threaten to destroy the family but also keep them tethered to one another.
I have organized the list into songs that represent the book’s various characters. Some songs make actual cameos in the novel, while others capture something essential about a character. These songs come from America, France, Japan, Shanghai, and the UK. The cast of Shanghailanders is multi-hyphenate, jet-setting, multilingual, and this playlist needed to represent that same wide reach.
EKO
The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain — Stacey Kent
Eko and Leo fell in love while university students in Paris. By the chronological end of the novel, they are living in Shanghai and have been together for over a quarter of a century. They are facing a crisis in their marriage and must find their way back to one another. I like to imagine that in their Paris years, they, too – young and in love – once crossed Europe in the rain. Re-interpretations of interpretations: this is the story of jazz, and this is also the story of every marriage.
Promises — Jhené Aiko
For much of her life with Leo, Eko’s role is defined by motherhood to their three daughters. Yet Eko’s relationship to motherhood is ambivalent. “Promises” is one of the most beautiful and true songs about motherhood: the contradictory desires to save every moment and to escape; the fierce impulse to protect a child from any form of harm but also the impossibility of doing so; the need to be a mother and the desire to remain still: a child, a sister, a self.
LEO
The End of the World — Julie London
Leo: mathematician, structural engineer, and hopeless romantic, craves nothing more than certainty. And yet the world all around him refuses to provide it. Leo goes through a dark phase of apocalyptic paranoia in his early middle age, where he is convinced that the end of the world is near. In the novel, he is threatened with another demise, including in his home and love life.
By the Suzhou River — The Shanghai Restoration Project
Shanghai, the city on the water, glorifies its past while embracing almost science- fictional ideas of the future. This song, a contemporary electronic remix of a 1946 song, is the perfect melding of past and present that I feel represents current-day Shanghai so well. It’s also about the magical way the world and time and even words fall away in the presence of the one you love.
“We walked and lost our way / wandering along the riverbank / I don’t know if the world has left us / or did we forget about her?”
KIKO
My Heart Belongs to Daddy — Marilyn Monroe
Kiko, the baby of the family and an aspiring actress, nurtures an obsession with her icon Marilyn Monroe. When she finds herself in the role of a high-end escort to a film producer in Shanghai, she partly justifies her actions by remembering that “the cost has always been the same” for aspiring actresses everywhere.
YUMI
Japanese Denim — Daniel Caesar
Cunning, cutting, cruel Yumi knows how to wrap men around her finger and then discard them like used Band-Aids. In one chapter that did not make it into the novel, Yumi seduces a young man working in the hotel that her family owns on the outskirts of Shanghai. “Japanese Denim” was my inspiration for that young man’s anonymous infatuation with the eldest of the Yang girls.
YOKO
I Get Along Without You Very Well – Chet Baker
Middle sister Yoko has always had a strained relationship with her older sister. Though only in high school, she is already seeing a therapist to work through the toxicities of the relationship and its impact on her. She also wants to understand why — and how — she is constantly pulled back into Yumi’s destructive orbit. Their relationship comes to a head in the spring of 2038.
AYI
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face — Roberta Flack
When I first heard Flack singing “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” I thought it was a mother’s ode to her child. That interpretation has stayed with me throughout the years, and the purity of the emotion in Flack’s voice is a fitting representation of Ayi’s dedication to Doroteia, the baby she cared for and loved before entering the Yang family’s employ.
DRIVER
Traveling — Utada Hikaru
Growing up in the age of the automated car, the nameless private driver for the Yang family always wanted to race. He fell in love with cars through the old arcade driving games dumped behind his shanty community. He learns Japanese through 90s cyberpunk manga to try to understand what the Yang girls say to one another. Hikaru’s “Traveling,” features her signature wavering, imperfect voice full of longing, and a driving house beat that speeds onward and cycles endlessly. The music video for this song is fittingly both retro and futuristic.
DAPHNE
Ces bottes son faites pour marcher — Eileen
She left her Japanese husband in the cherry blossom season of 1993. She took her boots and her kid, and she flew to France and never looked back. Daphne is the heroine of her own life, a life of her own making, and she won’t let anyone forget it. Disco dancing, eyeliner wearing, possible spy craft practicing, Daphne is a character who could beget ten spin-off novels.
Ring My Bell — Anita Ward
Daphne met her husband on the dance floor of a disco in Kyoto 1979. “Ring My Bell” was blaring with its frenetic, almost galactic energy, and she noticed a skinny man with a mustache and moves for days. Later, Daphne warns her young granddaughters: “A man is never as he seems at the discotheque.”
FAMILY
Easily – Bruno Major
“Don’t you tell me that it wasn’t meant to be… just because it won’t come easily doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
I’d like to end this list on a note of hope for the whole family. Will they make it through intact? Will love prevail? Maybe it’s still worth a try.
Juli Min is a writer and editor based in Shanghai. She studied Russian and comparative literature at Phillips Academy and Harvard University, and she holds an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson. She was the founding editor of The Shanghai Literary Review and served as its fiction editor from 2016 to 2023. Her first novel, Shanghailanders, will be published in May 2024 by Spiegel & Grau (US) and Dialogue Books (UK). Translations are also forthcoming in Japanese, Spanish, Norwegian, and German.