Stand Up, Yumi Chung!

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2020

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-7

Chapters 8-14

Chapters 15-22

Chapters 23-30

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 8-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary

A few hours after Yumi’s meeting with Mrs. Pak, her head is still spinning over the possibility of becoming a comedian. She meets Felipe and goes to comedy camp, still thinking about ways to get her parents to agree. She tells herself, “Here at camp, you are funny and confident and you fit in. As Kay Nakamura, you have nothing to be afraid of. This is just the thing you were hoping for: a fresh new start” (85).

Chapter 9 Summary

Back in the auditorium, Jasmine announces a charity performance to be held at a nearby nursing home and invites all the students to perform. She also says that the Haha Club will feature a comedy camp showcase the following Thursday, and she hopes everyone will attend. Then, the campers perform an improv exercise in groups of three. Yumi is asked to team up with Felipe and a girl named Sienna. On the first round of the improv, Yumi freezes up. After some additional coaching by Jasmine, she and her teammates try again and succeed in making the other students laugh.

During a snack break, Yumi hears about a Performing Arts Magnet School (PAMS) that’s about to open in the neighborhood. Both Sienna and Felipe will be auditioning to enroll. Sienna tells Yumi, “All you have to do is fill out the registration, get some recommendations, and show up for the audition. August eighteenth” (97). Even though Yumi secretly fears that her parents will say no, she feels she must try.

Chapter 10 Summary

After the restaurant closes that evening, Yumi waits for her parents when Yuri arrives. She says that she has something important to say. Before she can speak, Mr. Chung tells the family that the restaurant isn’t doing well and needs to lure new customers. His solution is to set up a karaoke stage in the back room. Yumi supports the idea: “People could rent it for poetry slams, open mic-nights, private parties...maybe even stand-up comedy” (110).

Mrs. Chung objects that the family has too many expenses, like Yuri’s school tuition. At this point, Yuri announces that she is quitting medical school because she hates it. Instead, she has joined the Peace Corps and will spend the next two years in Nepal. Yuri insists she must do this for herself, leaving her family in shock.

Chapter 11 Summary

The next day, Yumi and Ginny go for bubble tea at a café after their hagwon class. As they chat, Yumi sees Felipe walk in. He already knows Ginny, so this creates a potential embarrassment if Felipe addresses Yumi as Kim. She creates a diversion by spilling tea all over her shirt and asking Ginny to go to the bathroom to help her clean up. Felipe leaves, none the wiser about Yumi’s true identity.

Chapter 12 Summary

Shortly after the tea episode, Yumi slips into comedy class late. Jasmine is lecturing on why comedians share so many personal and embarrassing details about themselves. She says this is a way to connect with the audience and get them to care. Yumi secretly believes that she can’t talk about anything embarrassing. She was raised to hide her flaws.

As she ponders her dilemma, a plan begins to emerge. Yumi will find a way to get her parents to see her perform at the comedy camp showcase. She will also improve in her hagwon studies. After she aces the SSAT test, Yumi will then ask her parents to let her audition for PAMS. If she’s accepted, tuition will be free, and she will be able to go to school with her friends, Felipe and Sienna. That’s the plan, anyway.

Chapter 13 Summary

After class, while Yumi and her friends hang out at the comic bookstore, Mrs. Chung drives by to get her daughter. Once again, Yumi has to do some fast talking to avoid giving away her real identity to the other campers. Later in the car, she tells her mother that Felipe and Sienna are helping out at the hagwon as peer tutors, and her mother believes the lie. Yumi doesn’t like the deception: “I drop my head back onto the car headrest, and guilt gnaws at me from the inside. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up, but I have to. Just until the showcase” (148-49).

Chapter 14 Summary

The following day at the nursing home performance, Yumi bombs. She also gets Sienna angry over some of the jokes she makes at her friend’s expense. Afterward, Jasmine counsels her not to give up: “Might have been the crowd, might have been your wording. Doesn’t mean that it’s a bad joke. It just means it’s not ready yet. You have to keep tweaking it” (156). Jasmine talks about her struggle to break into comedy writing for television. Living with failure is a part of the comedian’s lot. Yumi secretly thinks that she doesn’t have the luxury of failing often. She’s only got one shot at impressing her parents with her comic skills.

Chapters 8-14 Analysis

The novel’s second segment shows Yumi trying to express her comedic talent in the outer world. Before this point, she only had Jasmine’s videos and her Super-Secret Comedy Notebook, which she hides from everyone. The opportunity to masquerade as Kay Nakamura emboldens her to try performing in front of a live audience, and she succeeds in making people laugh. However, Yumi is battling the Cultural Expectations that her parents instilled in her. She frequently indulges in negative self-talk that minimizes her talent: “Look at yourself, Yumi. You aren’t a comedian. You’re an awkward, lanky Korean girl from Koreatown. You can hardly get through a conversation without a stomachache. You think you can make people laugh? Onstage?” (83-84).

Despite her self-criticism, Yumi demonstrates a love for comedy that refuses to die despite parental pressure. Shortly after she makes the above declaration, she says:

My jokes, those are for me. That spark when I craft the perfect punch line, the satisfaction of coming up with a fresh take for a bit, the excitement of nailing just the right wording...it’s the best. It makes me feel like what I have to say is worth listening to (84-85).

Until this point in the story, Yumi faces a continuous battle to be heard by her parents. It is unfortunate that she believes people will only pay attention to her if she’s performing onstage. However, the pep talk from Mrs. Pak in the previous segment inspires Yumi to try to merge her two worlds and strike a balance between them. She seeks to overcome her parents’ cultural expectations by getting them to attend the comedy camp showcase.

Yumi fails to note that all her maneuvers to combine her two worlds are based on lies. She is passing for Kay Nakamura to fool her teacher and fellow campers. When her school friend encounters her comedy camp friend, Yumi must stage an accident to head off the truth. Later, she lies to the campers about her mother and lies to her mother about the campers. In planning how to get her parents to the performance, she concocts an even bigger lie about receiving a hagwon award to lure them there. Yumi’s various underhanded methods to achieve her goals are based on her Fear of Causing Disappointment. She has such a phobia about disappointing her parents that telling the truth seems far more painful than continuing to lie to everyone in her world.

This pattern of duplicity might have continued indefinitely if Yuri hadn’t taken the first step toward personal autonomy by announcing that she quit medical school. Yumi looks up to her elder sibling, mainly because Yuri has always received parental approval. Seeing her sister intentionally court their parents’ disappointment ought to give Yumi the courage to stage her own rebellion. However, the fear of disappointment runs far deeper in her nature than Yuri’s. Since Yumi has been viewed as a disappointing underachiever all her life, the stakes are higher for her.

Yumi’s fear of causing disappointment extends beyond her relationship with her parents. It also colors her comedy camp experience. When she fails at the nursing home show, she is devastated and loses faith in herself. Just as Mrs. Pak earlier offered Yumi some wise advice to help her succeed in her hagwon classes, Jasmine now steps in to offer a veteran comedian’s advice: “‘Well, most jokes start off as failures. It tells you what isn’t working, which is a very valuable thing. Living with “failure,’” Jasmine says with air quotes, ‘is an essential part of being a comedian’” (157). She encourages Yumi to keep on refining her routines until she finds the perfect bit to make an audience laugh.

This is good advice, but Jasmine does not understand the pressure Yumi feels to succeed and her phobia about disappointing her parents. This fear is so deeply ingrained that it threatens to smother all chance of Yumi’s self-expression if she fails to rise above it. Even at the end of the segment, with Jasmine’s inspiring words still echoing in her ears, Yumi doesn’t feel capable of defying her parents’ expectations of excellence. She says, “But what she’s saying feels wrong on so many levels. Mom and Dad raised me to hide my flaws, not broadcast them. Show your best face. What will others think? Excel and bring your family honor” (124-25). The True Yumi still doesn’t dare show her face.