Will leave readers laughing one moment, bemused the next.
A saucy, comical retrospective on growing up Korean in the United States.
Humorist Choi (Happy Birthday or Whatever, 2007) brings together the kind of letters we all long to write but don’t, as well as irreverent essays that poke fun at a hodgepodge of moments in her life. From questioning whether her father is gay (based on his endless love of musicals) to the frustrating and embarrassing moments when her extended Korean family endlessly question Choi about her rapidly diminishing ability to bear children (based on her age and lack of a husband), the author reveals all. Refreshingly honest, she perhaps offers a few too many intimate details: One essay centers around her inability to find underwear in the United States that will fit her "diminutive, flat Korean ass (like little rice cake)" and reveals that she and her mother wish to be buried with their panties so they "can have them in the afterlife"—it's that difficult to find the perfect fit. Other subjects for introspection include childhood camping and road trips (carsickness occupied more of her time than viewing the Grand Canyon); learning to drive, which required umpteen hours of reading the manual and having every aspect of the car explained before she was allowed behind the wheel; natural disasters real and imaginary, which she survived by "a miracle or in death or something in between"; and the family's hexagonal dining table, which fell into disrepair and yet was never thrown away. Whether amused, offended, weary or exasperated, Choi delivers her autobiographical anecdotes with a candid punch and a Korean slant.
Will leave readers laughing one moment, bemused the next.Pub Date: July 9, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9839-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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