Tagged with Asian-American

When I selected this memoir by a Taiwanese adoptee raised by white parents in Michigan reunited with her birth family, I expected something a bit more critical than Lucky Girl turns out to be. I guess I thought the title would be more ironic than it is. I don't think the title is entirely unlayered, but the author does seem pretty happy with how her life turned out, rather than how it might have if she'd remained one of too many (seven?) daughters of a Chinese couple that kept at it in the hopes of eventually producing a healthy, non-deformed boy.

I wasn't expecting to like The Namesake very much. I wasn't crazy about her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies, and the description wasn't particularly enticing. So why did I even read it? Maybe just because Lahiri is a Barnard alumna? Or because I'd saved it in my library account to read list, and it was the only thing I didn't have to go over to Columbia to borrow? Who knows? Regardless, I'm glad I did.

I was so psyched to read Lisa See's new historical novel that I snatched it off the cataloging truck to get at it faster. With that kind of build up, it would have been surprising if I liked it as much as I expected to, so maybe it's not Shanghai Girls's fault that I didn't love it.

You can just imagine the fun of growing up in the Midwest with a name like Bich (not pronounced the way it's spelled) and being so tiny that your peers want to use your head as an armrest, right? That's not what this childhood memoir from a Vietnamese-American whose family moved to Michigan when she was a baby is really about, but details like provide access points for people of all backgrounds, I think. Something else that will appeal to lots of y'all is Nguyen's love for and descriptions of food, especially the 1970s/80s candy that give her in her youth both torment and succor. She is a total foodie and is enraptured by the food writing in the Little House series. Who knew?