ILLUSTRATION | SONIA VERMA
Behind Kelly Loy Gilbert’s “Picture Us in the Light,” the novel that takes place at MVHS BY SHIVANI VERMA This article contains spoilers for “Picture Us in the Light” by Kelly Loy Gilbert.
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hen MVHS alum ‘03 and author Kelly Loy Gilbert’s mother first read “Picture Us in the Light,” she told Gilbert that because of its setting, “only people from Cupertino [were] ever going to read this book.” The novel, released in 2018, follows protagonist Danny Cheng, a senior at MVHS who finds out that his parents are hiding their past from him, while attempting to maintain his relationships with his friends. It addresses Asian culture, family, sexuality, immigration, mental health and trauma. Described by Gilbert as “a family drama about how secrets and traumas can reverberate across generations,” “Picture Us in the Light” is littered with references to the Cupertino community — Danny befriends his best friend during their eighth grade trip to Yosemite, drives down Bubb Road and gets donuts from Donut Wheel. His parents shop at Ranch 99 and his friends worry about getting into their dream colleges. Gilbert specifically wanted the story to be set in Cupertino because when
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EL ESTOQUE | MARCH 2022
she was in high school, she did not feel truly represented by the books she read. She recalls all the Asian American representation consisting of a character and their culture standing in stark contrast from their surroundings; being in an extreme minority was often part of the books’ plots. Yet Gilbert believes that being in the racial majority rather than a minority was “formative” to her and wanted to reflect that in the novel. “A lot of the experiences that I had growing up Asian American felt really normalized, and they felt really kind of widespread and not really othered in a way that I think they would have been if I’d grown up somewhere else,” Gilbert said. “So one of the things I wanted to do in the book was write that setting where you could have this diverse variety of Asian American experiences, and where it didn’t feel like this really narrow other experience.” However, Gilbert still acknowledges that racist perspectives exist in Cupertino. According to her, a unique aspect of Cupertino is how it’s like
a “bubble” that somewhat, but not completely, shields its population of people of color from overt racism. She wanted racism to be an aspect of the book because she believed it would be “more true to life.” Gilbert not only wanted to capture the nuances of the community’s culture and racial dynamics, but also explore the “class stratification” and “intense academic pressure” that she has found rampant in Cupertino. Although she says she loved her years at MVHS, Gilbert acknowledges the difficulties of its environment. “I feel like [everyone I know] still struggle[s] so much with self-esteem or [relaxation] because that pressure and idea that you always have to be succeeding and working really hard and competing really gets ingrained in you [and forms] a really capitalistic [idea of] what success and self-worth look like,” Gilbert said. “My insight is that it’s hard to break out of even all these years later.” She tried to mirror both her meaningful friendships at MVHS and the issues of mental health that were
