Event then, she refuses to be swallowed by confusion and isolation any longer. On some level, she understands she is different from what others think and expect of her. Her perspective reveals a ravenous desire to see the otherness in people that she feels in herself. She maintains a perfect balance between courage and naivety, which is challenging to find in many main characters. Her narration is introspective and attentive. Lily Hu is an easy main character to emphasize with, follow, and understand in Last Night At The Telegraph Club. The book narrates Lily’s point of view alongside a historically accurate timeline of the 1950’s However, this isn’t simply a novel with LGBTQ+ representation Lily Hu’s journey unfolds amidst the Red Scare, homophobia and sexism running rampant. Together, they secretly attend the Telegraph Club, a lesbian bar in San Francisco, gradually exploring and realizing their sexualities. She becomes friends with Kathleen Miller, her first white friend, distancing herself from her childhood Chinese American friends. Her passion for rockets, outer space, and STEM continues to grow, conflicting with rigid familial, societal, and cultural expectations. Lily’s senior year is a time marked by curiosity, exploration, and change.

Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950’s, Lily begins to question herself and her future as she enters her senior year of high school. Last Night At The Telegraph Club follows the journey of seventeen-year-old Chinese American, Lily Hu as she falls in love and discovers herself. Last Night At The Telegraph Club presents the story of a Chinese American protagonist However, the historical nature and intersectional lens of Last Night At The Telegraph Club makes it a must-read of Lo’s. A Line in the Dark is another young adult mystery novel with a lesbian main character. Ash, another one of Lo’s novels, reimagines the Cinderella fairy tale with the main character as a lesbian teenager. But Last Night At The Telegraph Club is not Malinda Lo’s first queer romance or WLW book. Yet, it’s already on track to be a classic in LGBTQ+ literature. It was only in January 2021, Malinda Lo published her latest young adult historical fiction novel, Last Night At The Telegraph Club.

Last night telegraph club