Reviewed by Shannon Wolf

In a tactile work of blending and blurred lines, both structurally and thematically, Cynthia Arrieu-King takes stock of her lived experiences—thoughtfully measuring and quantifying her identity as an Asian-American, a Kentuckian, a Jane Austen movie aficionado, a daughter, an aunt and, perhaps surprisingly, a quilter. The Betweens is built of blocks, quick vignettes that jump from scene to scene, in and out of time, so we are able to see King in the present day, as a child, as a teen. At points, looking at the memoir with a logical eye, the reader might see a writer free-associating, but there is something meticulous and insightful about the ordering of thought here. This precision and the graceful economy of Arrieu-King's language make these snippets of conversation, sketches of characters, and recollections of journeys evolve into a cinematic experience that stays on the brain long after the final page.

Arrieu-King's wealth of experience in the poetic field sings through in this lyrical and formally inventive memoir. Early on, Arrieu-King sets the tone of the text, which spends quite some time focusing on racist microaggressions, seeking to make sense of their place in her life and the lives of those in her immediate community. Memorably, early on she writes: "My moments of negotiating being half Asian and half white pile up, reverberate, fall clanging, rest in my mind like dishes in a cupboard." This harsh musicality seems to echo through the rest of the book.

Of course, this is a memoir, and there is much to learn about Arrieu-King in terms of the life she has lived and the experiences she's accumulated—and we do just that in the course of this slim volume. She is very much in service as an aunt, often speaking both to the memory of her niece as a toddler—the commonality they find in one another with their inherited Chinese features juxtaposed with her niece's blonde mother—and to her niece as a young woman. One vignette is dedicated to a scene at a movie theater, where aunt and niece are co-conspirators, witnessing the people of color on the screen meet their end: "There have never been this many Brown and Black people in a Star Wars movie. We all brace ourselves for them to die, but we didn't expect all but two of them to die. When we step out blinking into the parking lot, the entire friend group is glum and silent." This language is frank and sparing. Arrieu-King doesn't ask her reader to draw their own conclusion. Rather, this is her space for figuring out the recipe of racial aggrandizement as she folds in statistics, quotes, recollections of an ancestor, the white men who try to correct perceived affronts to their white savior sensibilities.

There is a constant sense that, while she knows her interior self, her wider, cultural identity is more challenging: not Asian enough, not American enough, not Chinese enough, not white enough. On top of all this, there is the relentless self-inspection that many female-identifying people can recognize. For every small building block, we get another piece of the puzzle that both comforts and confounds the woman piecing it together.

In addition to Arrieu-King's identity exploration, there are cultural touchstones for many readers, whether she's referencing Derrida, a Cheerios commercial, Sarah Palin, or her quarterly viewing of Sense and Sensibility with her mother. What I'm most drawn to, though, is the constant return to quilting and sewing. This is a meaningful act for Arrieu-King, full of nostalgia and shared history. First the quilts enter as a delicate veil for her own racial identity: "It's a grid of squares. Each square is divided into two triangles: one is colorful and various so the whole grid shimmers and the other half of each triangle is white." This intermingling of color and lightness casts a warm glow upon her identity introspection. Later still, there is a slow and easy catharsis in the language around sewing, with an indication that she finds herself falling short, unable to meet expectations or, perhaps, that she is unwilling to force what does not fit: "When she taught me to sew, my mother constantly reminded me to use the thimble. That I should learn to use it to push the needle through. Her thimble always fell off of me because it was too big [. . .] I know I'm never going to wear a thimble, the simple protection from pain." This is a beloved act, this patching together of fabrics to make something that envelops and contains. And this small act of rebellion, the shirking of a thimble, suggests a lionhearted way forward for this memoirist. 

The book is lovely and brief, the perfect length for reading in the garden as the sun runs low on light. It is both beautifully written and painstakingly organized, and the way the vignettes are braided into one another across many pages never fails to surprise or delight. In a callback to the title, Arrieu-King writes: "To sew together all the layers—with scrolls, feathers, spirals—you have to use a needle so thin and short that it can penetrate all the layers, and that needle is called a between." Indeed, The Betweens does just that, stitching together all the layers of its subject, past and present, all the roles they play each day, creating a patchwork you'll want to return to, almost immediately, to see which small detail you can absorb next.