Karen Tongson's Why Karen Carpenter Matters, offers a rich history of Karen Carpenter's life and legacy. Tongson constructs a chronological narrative through the Carpenter family's move to California, the beginning of the Carpenter siblings' musical career, and, finally, Karen Carpenter's untimely demise, unearthing the soft rock superstar's influence within and beyond the music industry. Each chapter of the book offers a look into particular aspects of Carpenter's life and career, and as a

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... s of demonstrating Carpenter's larger sociocultural significance, Tongson layers this biographic information with narratives of her own life and family history. As Tongson writes throughout, the connections between herself and Karen Carpenter extend uncannily beyond their shared name. Tongson's reverence for Karen Carpenter is evident throughout the book, imbuing her argument with passion that keeps the reader interested. Three major themes are apparent throughout the book, which I will briefly discuss in this review. One theme is sexuality, gender identity, and performance. Although these three topics are threads that come up both on their own and in combination with one another throughout the book, they are most directly explored in Chapters 2, 5, and 7. These chapters explore (both) Karen's deviant gender expression and performance, outlining (both) Karen's interest in drumming (a masculinized instrument), Carpenter's (often forced) construction and performance of femininity in relationship to her brother, and Carpenter's disordered eating. Also important in this theme is the emphasis on an intercultural analysis of gender drawn from Tongson's narratives of herself, her mother, and other family members as located in the Philippines. Finally, Tongson demonstrates the importance of finding representations of queerness within seemingly heteronormative popular culture artifacts as a means of identity negotiation and survival. In essence, Tongson's project productively queers the history of Karen Carpenter. Another theme important within this book is (both) Karen's proximity to whiteness and suburbia. This theme is perhaps most evident in the first