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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
I kept seeing this book on shelves and was turned off by the fuchsia color and the 70's lettering and honestly the FOB title. I clearly didn't look close enough to catch the irony.
I was so so surprised by how much I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I feel like I know Eddie. Ok so he is a decade younger and grew up on the other side of the country and was hanging with the brothers and digging the Ebonics but I KNOW him. He is real Asian America. He is food and education and respecting the elders even if they mess with you. He is culture - Chinese and American.
I just gaffawed so loud when reading some of his incredibly literate astute observations laced with wry commentary and hip hop verses.
So now I am fascinated and would love to try his food. Trying to think of someone else who would enjoy this book as much as I did.
I was so so surprised by how much I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I feel like I know Eddie. Ok so he is a decade younger and grew up on the other side of the country and was hanging with the brothers and digging the Ebonics but I KNOW him. He is real Asian America. He is food and education and respecting the elders even if they mess with you. He is culture - Chinese and American.
I just gaffawed so loud when reading some of his incredibly literate astute observations laced with wry commentary and hip hop verses.
So now I am fascinated and would love to try his food. Trying to think of someone else who would enjoy this book as much as I did.
I picked this one up because of the TV show. It was mildly funny at first, but the older Eddie got, the less entertaining the book became. He spent a lot of time talking about how amazingly cool he is and how everyone else's life is wrong. It started to grate on me after awhile. And if you are offended by raw language, don't even bother starting it; I think about half of his vocabulary is swearing.
I’m so not Eddie Huang’s target audience for Fresh Off the Boat. My interest in his memoir came from how much I like the show, which Huang actually doesn’t like because it totally sanitizes his life story and makes it more palatable to the white palate. I’ve also got very little knowledge of hip hop, don’t do drugs (and never have) and I’m white and nerdy as can be.
Eddie Huang’s got a powerful voice, one that I’d have expected to find annoying, but he’s being so himself that it’s hard not to appreciate that honesty. It’s interesting to compare the show with the book and to see the way that they altered his story to make it prime time comedy material. I liked the memoir, but I know my boyfriend will get so much more out of it, as a foodie Korean-American into hip hop and basketball. I’m going to force him to listen.
Eddie Huang’s got a powerful voice, one that I’d have expected to find annoying, but he’s being so himself that it’s hard not to appreciate that honesty. It’s interesting to compare the show with the book and to see the way that they altered his story to make it prime time comedy material. I liked the memoir, but I know my boyfriend will get so much more out of it, as a foodie Korean-American into hip hop and basketball. I’m going to force him to listen.
Huge fan of this book. Love the honesty and the critique on being Asian American - this is different from the Ethnic Studies / AsAm courses I took in college. Less of the academia discourse but more real talk with real life examples of someone learning to break out of the mold that comes with being Asian/Chinese American. Book is inspiring on all levels - career-wise, passions, and being comfortable in my own skin. Oh, and food. Looking forward to trying some bao. WE OUT.
I loved this book! It's so unique because he writes in such an authentically "Eddie Huang" voice. If you're don't use the same hip-hop vernacular as him then he can be a bit hard to understand at times. But I didn't care! I loved! It was all part of the story he was trying to tell. He story is such a great story for anybody who takes a less than conventional path. Plus he tackles racism through it all. Well done dude.
dark
funny
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I love the TV show so I dove into this book. It was fine, way darker than the show. It was very hard to read because of the slang and the precise pop culture references, if you weren't in the States in the '90 you can't keep up. Also 20% of the book is food and basketball.
I did not really know what to expect when I picked this up. It was really enjoyable. It is a quick read and very straightforward. Does not take itself too seriously and tells a good story.
Fate introduced me to this book via the upcoming ABC show of the same name, supposedly based on this guy's memoir. But who was this guy? We haven't had a sitcom centered around Asian-Americans since 1994's All American Girl with Margaret Cho. And I had never heard of this person. I enjoy a good Asian American memoir though, so off to the library I went.
It so happens that Eddie Huang is quite a character. Owner of a hot restaurant on the lower east side of Manhattan called Baohaus, he apparently has racked up several years of television work through VICE media and appearances on Food Network even before his restaurants started getting media attention.
The book had me believing he's a little like a real life G Fresh from Orgasmo, and the memoir explains how he grew and learned to embrace all things street. (I ended up needing to look up several words on Urban Dictionary.) As he sees it, embracing street culture makes a ton of sense given the common struggle of minorities in the United States. So in addition to G Fresh he's also got a fair amount in common with Malcolm X. He's also clearly incredibly well-educated and a hugely independent thinker.
Overall I guess outlining his 'hustles' over the years (selling porn, weed, and fancy sneakers), talking about his G life that led to a couple of arrests, and the street language didn't really appeal to me very much as I read, but everything else really did. The book was still pretty engaging. It's refreshing to see someone intensely proud of not fitting a model (as in 'model minority'). It'll be interesting to see if the ABC show covers the darker side of the childhood years, and/or if the show will last long enough to get into less sitcomy aspects of his life.
It so happens that Eddie Huang is quite a character. Owner of a hot restaurant on the lower east side of Manhattan called Baohaus, he apparently has racked up several years of television work through VICE media and appearances on Food Network even before his restaurants started getting media attention.
The book had me believing he's a little like a real life G Fresh from Orgasmo, and the memoir explains how he grew and learned to embrace all things street. (I ended up needing to look up several words on Urban Dictionary.) As he sees it, embracing street culture makes a ton of sense given the common struggle of minorities in the United States. So in addition to G Fresh he's also got a fair amount in common with Malcolm X. He's also clearly incredibly well-educated and a hugely independent thinker.
Overall I guess outlining his 'hustles' over the years (selling porn, weed, and fancy sneakers), talking about his G life that led to a couple of arrests, and the street language didn't really appeal to me very much as I read, but everything else really did. The book was still pretty engaging. It's refreshing to see someone intensely proud of not fitting a model (as in 'model minority'). It'll be interesting to see if the ABC show covers the darker side of the childhood years, and/or if the show will last long enough to get into less sitcomy aspects of his life.
Really connected Huang's deep passion for food, but the way he refers to women in this book made me physically cringe.
Read as my second book in the 2017 Booktube-a-thon challenge.
Read as my second book in the 2017 Booktube-a-thon challenge.