JOHNNY DELIVERS
by Wayne Ng
Coming Oct 31, 2024!
Preorder NOW: Shop Local / Amazon.CA / Indigo / Amazon.COM / Barnes & Noble / Guernica Editions
🏆On Most Anticipated Fall Fiction Lists at CBCbooks & 49thShelf
Eighteen-year-old Johnny Wong’s dead-end life consists of delivering Chinese food and holding his chaotic family together in Toronto . When his sweet but treacherous Auntie, the mahjong queen, calls in their family debt, he fears the family will lose the Red Pagoda restaurant and break apart.
Invoking the spirit of Bruce Lee and in cahoots with his stoner friend Barry, Johnny tries to save his family by taking up a life of crime delivering weed with a side of egg rolls. He chases his first love, but his hands are already full with his emotionally distant mother, his dream-crushing father, and his reckless, sardonic little sister. As he fights to stay ahead of his Auntie, sordid family secrets unfold. With lives on the line, the only way out is an epic mahjong battle.
While Johnny is on a mission to figure out who he is and what he wants, he must learn that help can come from within and that our heroes are closer than we think.
Dripping with 1970s nostalgia, Johnny Delivers is a gritty and humorous standalone sequel to the much-loved and award-winning Letters From Johnny.
This is a great book but it’s also a nice historical look. Great gift for any Toronto lover.—MARGARET CANNON, The Globe and Mail
Wayne Ng’s Johnny Delivers, hits it out of the park. This hilarious and enthralling account of a teenager’s quest to save his family restaurant and keep his parents together by becoming a purveyor of marijuana is a must-read…Ng’s cutting social critique is perfectly complemented by a sense of nostalgia and the aspiration for acceptance by one’s peers…Ng draws on decades of experience as a social worker for the Ottawa Catholic School Board, giving him a wealth of insights and contacts with young people that inform his characters and plots. —IAN THOMAS SHAW, The Ottawa Review of Books
In Johnny Delivers, Wayne Ng crafts a poignant and heartbreaking saga of betrayal, hurt, human frailty amidst compassion, and undying love for one’s family. Ng is a highly accomplished storyteller whose affecting and humorous voice shines through his nuanced depiction of the Chinese immigrant experience in 1970s Toronto, while subverting Asian Canadian tropes of the model-minority myth. The real-world events that drive the plot, of a young man parenting his parents, taking on his mother’s debt with his self-sacrifice, and his eventual turning to crime as a means of survival, make this a deeply compelling novel. Within these pages, you will find sorrow, innocence, sympathy and coming-of-age, propelled by the deep yearnings of a complicated protagonist.—LINDSAY WONG, Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality and CBC Reads finalist for The Woo-Woo
Johnny Delivers does just that!! It’s a funny, sweet, rollercoaster of a story that delivers more than just egg rolls with drugs. Wayne Ng is at his best as he skillfully weaves hilarious, edge-of-your-seat action with poignant teen angst. Lovably innocent Johnny Wong is obsessed with Bruce Lee, girls, writing, and keeping his family from falling apart, no matter what. I couldn’t put it down.–KATIE TALLO, International bestselling author of Dark August
Gritty, funny, sad and uplifting. A great story about food, family and finding your way.— KEVIN SYLVESTER, bestselling author of the MiNRS Trilogy
Wayne Ng delivers in giving us an authentic glimpse into the struggles and racism faced by Chinese immigrants in Toronto in 1977 through the eyes of a spirited teenager whom you will root for.— JENNILEE AUSTRIA-BONIFACIO, CBC Reads longlisted for Reuniting with Strangers
Family secrets, cultural identity, racism, and crime collide in this coming of age story that is equal parts funny and vexing. I was charmed by Johnny’s compassion and good intentions, and I read with increasing anxiety as his ambition causes the walls to close in. A fascinating portrayal of an immigrant family’s experience of Toronto in the 70s, Johnny Delivers is thought-provoking, heartfelt, and highly entertaining.–KATE A BOORMAN, award-winning author of Winterkill
In a much awaited sequel to his award-winning novel Letters from Johnny, Wayne Ng introduces us to an older Johnny balancing family debt and the drug underworld. The complexity of Asian family dynamics are revealed through concise dialogues. Much is left unsaid. Family secrets are tenaciously guarded or simply brushed off. Humour is used as a defence mechanism. As a Vietnamese-Canadian, I understand well this wall of silence permeating first generation immigrants. Ng writes with authenticity. He writes from the heart. To understand Johnny’s dilemma is to understand the immigrant experience. Johnny Delivers should be on all reading lists.--CAROLINE VU, author of Catinat Boulevard
- CBC Radio Ottawa – In Town and Out – Interview with Giacomo Panico
- BookTrib – Bruce Lee, Defying Stereotypes, and the Catharsis of Writing
- All Lit Up Homegrown 2.0: Locally Produced Reads
- The Miramichi Reader’s “Why I Wrote This Book”
- CKCU FM 91.3 – Interview with Sue Johnston
- Johnny Delivers makes CBCbooks list of recommended fiction books to read this fall!
- Ricepaper Magazine: Hollay Ghadery’s Interview with George Lee and Wayne Ng
- Johnny Delivers makes 49thShelf’s Most Anticipated Fall Fiction List!
- Johnny Delivers on Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) alumni book list for 2024
Johnny Delivers is a work of fiction, although I wanted to integrate personal and historical elements from 1977. As the son of Chinese immigrants, I was born and raised in downtown Toronto. My father worked as a chef at Lichee Garden, and I had many relatives who ran Chinese restaurants. I worshipped Bruce Lee and watched his films at the Pagoda Theatre. I lived on Henry Street and attended Central Technical School, skipping classes to play pinball and smoke at Manny’s and Nick’s.
The Chinese head tax passed by the Canadian government, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the tongs, also known as associations, and the arrival of the triads in the 1970s are all matters of historical record. My grandfather Ng Men Chem paid the head tax in 1911.
What is less known are the other draconian measures placed upon the Chinese in Canada. Other immigrant groups were not immune to racism, but none experienced the systemic brutality inflicted upon the Chinese, who were racially profiled, registered, numbered, interrogated, and tracked. The threat of a severe fine, imprisonment, and deportation was never far, even for those born in Canada. Because of such measures and the history of exclusion, many Chinese could only enter the country through forged documents, leading to the term paper sons and daughters. Many paper children (such as my mother and an uncle) kept this secret, leaving many with little connection to any family history.
For more information, visit the Chinese Canadian Museum and the Chinatown Storytelling Centre in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Title: Johnny Delivers
Author: Wayne Ng
Publisher: Guernica Editions
Publication Dates: Oct 31, 2024.
Number of Pages: 283
Word Count:
Genre: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction-Coming of Age, Fiction-Humorous, Crime, Mystery, Multicultural, Own Voices
ISBN 10: 1771838906
ISBN 13: 978-1771838900
ISBN:
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts