It was his senior year, and the whole world felt on the verge of cracking open. Not when he was at Harvard, this place of dreams, and he was so close to everything he had ever wanted. It might have been a small thing, to be called Chinese instead of Chinese American, to have this detective who spoke in a Boston accent look at him as if this place, this museum, this art didn’t belong to him, but-it didn’t feel like a small thing. Worse, the detective in charge of the case reveals subtle nativist tendencies while questioning him:
One of the thieves slips a business card into his pocket as they’re making a getaway, leading Will, already dissatisfied with what he’s learned about imperialism as an art history major, to contemplate his own complicity in institutional theft hiding behind the mask of cultural education. Will Chen is a Harvard student working part-time at Boston’s Sackler Museum when he witnesses the audacious theft of almost two dozen pieces of Chinese art.
What I got instead was a slow burn look into the minds of five relatively privileged Chinese American college students-all around the age of twenty-one-as they grapple round and round with identity, belonging, and moral rectitude, especially as it pertains to cultural heritage. Li’s Portrait of a Thief expecting a fast-paced, exciting crime thriller with characters who felt close enough to me in the Asian American immigrant experience to be almost instinctively relatable.
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