{"id":43391,"date":"2025-09-01T16:45:53","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T20:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=43391"},"modified":"2025-09-01T16:45:53","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T20:45:53","slug":"review-of-kween-by-vichet-chum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=43391","title":{"rendered":"Review of Kween, by Vichet Chum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kween<\/em><\/p>\n

by Vichet Chum<\/p>\n

Quill Tree Books, 2023. 343 pages.
\nReview written November 4, 2023, from a library book.<\/p>\n

Kween<\/em> is about Soma, a Cambodian teen born and brought up in Lowell, Massachusetts, dealing with things and learning to process it all and express herself. A poem she writes and performs online goes viral, but the essay she didn\u2019t write, telling the teacher she was sick of writing about history from the perspective of colonizers got her an F.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, her father got deported back to Cambodia after decades in the U.S. and a green card. And her mother went to Cambodia to be with him, supposedly only for a visit, but she keeps pushing back her return date. They left her in the care of her much-older sister, and Soma resents Dahvy acting like her parent. But Dahvy\u2019s planning her wedding to Ruben, and both of them are teachers at Soma\u2019s school and get in her business. They encourage her to enter a poetry contest in which the finalists will perform their poems. <\/p>\n

So Dahvy\u2019s buzzing with things to do for the wedding, and Soma wants to wait until Ma gets back. Though at the same time, there\u2019s this girl she\u2019s had a crush on forever who finally notices her.<\/p>\n

The book is narrated by Soma, who\u2019s named after the first queen of Cambodia, and it\u2019s full of teen slang, which put me off at the beginning. But I did get used to it as I went along (and will trust the author to know better than me what\u2019s authentic), and I was pulled in to the many things Soma was juggling \u2013 missing her father while dealing with her stressed-out sister and trying to find her voice as a performance poet.<\/p>\n

The many different threads are woven together seamlessly and keep you interested and I loved seeing Soma learn to be a Kween. (I can\u2019t use the slang right and shouldn\u2019t even try.)<\/p>\n

vichetchum.com<\/a>
\nEpicReads.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Teens\/kween.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

Subscribe<\/a> for more reviews and talk about books.<\/p>\n

Join the conversation: What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kween by Vichet Chum Quill Tree Books, 2023. 343 pages. Review written November 4, 2023, from a library book. Kween is about Soma, a Cambodian teen born and brought up in Lowell, Massachusetts, dealing with things and learning to process it all and express herself. A poem she writes and performs online goes viral, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contemporary","category-teen-fiction-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43391"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45675,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43391\/revisions\/45675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}