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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
It may seem contradictory to say I want people to preserve their culture and then reject certain things, like the model minority expectations a-la-carte, but there's a fine distinction to be made between sterotypes and culture. In my Chinese-America I don't care if you have high SAT scores or use chopsticks, all I want to know is if you are aware of shared problems and issues due to our skin, eyes, and country of origin.
I enjoyed listening to the audiobook read by the author, especially when Eddie would laugh at his own stories. Sharing his memories along with the food he loves makes you feel at home.
I LOVE the TV show "Fresh Off the Boat," which is what inspired me to pick this text up. It was a mistake. Eddie Huang is an asshole. From bragging about what a shitty person he is to insulting Americans, Eddie's book does nothing to improve his image. I'd read some articles in which he discussed how much he hated the show that was based on his life, mostly because he wanted it to be 100% factual and didn't understand why Disney-owned ABC didn't include child abuse in their light-hearted family sitcom, so I already knew he was a bit of a prick, but this memoir was just bad. Eddie came off as unintelligent and a complete narcissist. It was also really hard to understand his writing at many points because he speaks/writes in ebonics randomly.
Really, every page I read annoyed and disappointed me, and I couldn't stomach it enough to even make it halfway through.
Really, every page I read annoyed and disappointed me, and I couldn't stomach it enough to even make it halfway through.
Take a seat, because I have a LOT of thoughts on this one. Whew.
I gave this three stars not because I don’t fuck with it. Mr. Huang, if you’re reading this somehow, I actually fuck with it heavy. Your entire narrative of feeling like the “outcast Asian” and being stuck between “not being Asian enough” and “not being American” is something that resonated with me to my very core.
The memoir deals out Mr. Huang’s very raw opinions and social commentary on race in America, growing up as an Asian American under the model-minority mold and bamboo ceiling, and the struggle of finding an identity when every corner you turn to it’s another dead end. I loved that about this book and found myself saying “hell yeah brother” more times than I can count. I’ve bookmarked and highlighted more times in this book than most any other book I’ve read because I felt challenged by Mr. Huang, which I value.
Mr. Huang also does an absolutely phenomenal job at discussing cultural food and its impact on conversations regarding race and traditionalism. I learned much, much more about cultural dishes and their impact from this book than I ever had watching Food Network.
Yet I couldn’t bring it to more than 4 stars, because while Mr. Huang said many things I loved, he also said many more things that did not sit well with me.
Mr. Huang will sometimes engage in dialogue that seems like internalized self hatred of being Asian. There’s a lot of sections that just scream “I’m a DIFFERENT Asian from all the other Asians!” and it especially made me frown when he bragged about making Asian jokes for a crowd of black people during a stand up routine for laughs. Yikes. It seems like the narrative was “I was rejected by my own people so I tried really hard to be accepted and enjoyed by another race that wasn’t white people.” Like come on dawg, you really gotta clown your own people like that for some clout? Maybe I got it all fucked up. Lemme know otherwise.
The way he writes is very off putting too. Mr. Huang is a writing paradox. He is a very educated and well written man, I will give him that credit. And in the next chapter he’s writing about shawties and using oldhead misogynistic jargon. Maybe that’s just the way he wants to let himself be translated. Throughout the book he makes it very clear that no matter how educated, how successful he gets, he doesn’t forget his roots and stays true to where he came from. But man, you gotta work with the times bro.
Again, I will give credit where credit is due. Mr. Huang is very passionate and informed about the Asian American experience and how he wants his experience to be a footprint for the generations after him. His knowledge of food, hip hop, and culture is impressive and are good takeaways. Hell, I’d love to kick it with him over some Heineken and talk about the state of hip hop and politics. I’d be down for that.
But a lot of people are gonna be offended and put off by this book. Shit, if you can’t hang, then you won’t get it. I wouldn’t recommend this book as the book for an outsider to read to understand the racial and social commentary of being an Asian American. But I grew up as an Asian in the hood of Houston, and I felt this shit. And if you’re a person of color that needs a voice to say the shit that you experienced, this is the book for you. It’s crude, it’s offensive, hell it’s even arrogant, but it’s real. And I know Mr. Huang wouldn’t have wanted it to be anything less.
"Fresh Off the Boat" or FOB is a term commonly used by (both East and South) Asians born or raised in the United States to describe newly immigrated Asians (often only men) who have strong native accents and have not accustomed themselves to American norms of behavior or thinking. It is mainly used as a pejorative, yet ironically, is the title of famous chef and TV personality Eddie Huang's first book and memoir.
Huang was both born and raised in the U.S. and persistently emphasizes his ability to speak American slang, his passion for hip-hop and love for American basketball throughout his book, which lends one the impression of the "anti-FOB" rather than a FOB. Though, perhaps, it is his feeling of being an outsider even within his own community because of what he feels is his unorthodox reclamation of his Asianess that is comparable to the otherness felt by most new immigrants.
Like most people, I found out about Eddie Huang through the premier of the ABC sitcom originally meant to be based on his life and this memoir. To Huang's dismay, the book and TV series are very different. If you like the show, especially the episodes after season one, chances are that you are not going to like this book. It is not surprising why the two are exceedingly different, as the book does not try very hard to be relatable to everyone, unlike the show.
If I am completely honest, I doubt Eddie and I would have been friends if we went to the same high school, or even hung out with the same kind of kids. I am quite similar to the Asian Americans he despises in the book, who care too much about their grades, becoming a professional, and not fighting hard enough against the model-minority myth because it benefits us. Though, the latter only because I am too busy fighting off the 'brown terrorist" stereotype, which unlike East Asians, South Asians have to deal with. Huang actually expresses his envy in the book over how 9/11 ended the emasculation of brown men, which I found hilarious, and is one of probably many views I disagree with him about. Additionally, I did not listen to the same kind of music as him during high school and consciously avoided speaking African-American slang. It was not because I believed it to be "downward assimilation" as Huang accuses many Asian Americans of worrying about in the book whenever they judged his style of talking, but because I was interested in creating our own dialect rather than mimicking someone else's. I guess he did not have that option given how there were less Asians in Florida than there are today to create any sort of subculture.
Despite these major differences, however, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was able to understand many of his feelings and experiences. As previously mentioned, this book is not for everyone, including Asians. The first thing I admired was his politics and his remedy for social awareness: Food. Huang uses cooking and eating as a medium to understand different cultures and politics, as well as to express his own views, which is best showcased in his Viceland series. He is an ardent advocate of multiculturalism and social openness. This is not a food book, however, as Huang admits, but a coming of age story of how a first-generation American got his life together and was able to combine his passions. Huang identifies less with the country he was born in and more with certain cities he’s lived in, particularly New York and Taipei. His attitudes towards patriotism were very similar to mine as even I identify more with particular cities (Chicago and Dubai) than countries where I was born in or have citizenship of.
His relationship with his family, although very dysfunctional, feels very familiar to the stories of millions of Asians whose standards of living have increased these last few decades right before the turn of the twenty-first century that has led to a generation gap between our parents or grandparents who were dirt poor and those of us who were raised middle class. My grandparents were refugees of the partition of India right around the same time Huang's grandparents were refugees of the Maoist revolution in China after the Second World War. Their reticence over that experience and how Huang suspects it may have had something to do with his family's migration to the U.S. also felt familiar with my own experiences.
In short, the exclusive nature of this book is why I enjoyed reading it so much. If you agree with Huang's socially liberal politics, then you are going to like this book. If you have a similar background as I do, then you are going to like this book. But even if you don't feel or have either, yet enjoy reading stories of people very different from you, then you are also likely to enjoy this book as it is both sincere, educational and entertaining.
Huang was both born and raised in the U.S. and persistently emphasizes his ability to speak American slang, his passion for hip-hop and love for American basketball throughout his book, which lends one the impression of the "anti-FOB" rather than a FOB. Though, perhaps, it is his feeling of being an outsider even within his own community because of what he feels is his unorthodox reclamation of his Asianess that is comparable to the otherness felt by most new immigrants.
Like most people, I found out about Eddie Huang through the premier of the ABC sitcom originally meant to be based on his life and this memoir. To Huang's dismay, the book and TV series are very different. If you like the show, especially the episodes after season one, chances are that you are not going to like this book. It is not surprising why the two are exceedingly different, as the book does not try very hard to be relatable to everyone, unlike the show.
If I am completely honest, I doubt Eddie and I would have been friends if we went to the same high school, or even hung out with the same kind of kids. I am quite similar to the Asian Americans he despises in the book, who care too much about their grades, becoming a professional, and not fighting hard enough against the model-minority myth because it benefits us. Though, the latter only because I am too busy fighting off the 'brown terrorist" stereotype, which unlike East Asians, South Asians have to deal with. Huang actually expresses his envy in the book over how 9/11 ended the emasculation of brown men, which I found hilarious, and is one of probably many views I disagree with him about. Additionally, I did not listen to the same kind of music as him during high school and consciously avoided speaking African-American slang. It was not because I believed it to be "downward assimilation" as Huang accuses many Asian Americans of worrying about in the book whenever they judged his style of talking, but because I was interested in creating our own dialect rather than mimicking someone else's. I guess he did not have that option given how there were less Asians in Florida than there are today to create any sort of subculture.
Despite these major differences, however, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and was able to understand many of his feelings and experiences. As previously mentioned, this book is not for everyone, including Asians. The first thing I admired was his politics and his remedy for social awareness: Food. Huang uses cooking and eating as a medium to understand different cultures and politics, as well as to express his own views, which is best showcased in his Viceland series. He is an ardent advocate of multiculturalism and social openness. This is not a food book, however, as Huang admits, but a coming of age story of how a first-generation American got his life together and was able to combine his passions. Huang identifies less with the country he was born in and more with certain cities he’s lived in, particularly New York and Taipei. His attitudes towards patriotism were very similar to mine as even I identify more with particular cities (Chicago and Dubai) than countries where I was born in or have citizenship of.
His relationship with his family, although very dysfunctional, feels very familiar to the stories of millions of Asians whose standards of living have increased these last few decades right before the turn of the twenty-first century that has led to a generation gap between our parents or grandparents who were dirt poor and those of us who were raised middle class. My grandparents were refugees of the partition of India right around the same time Huang's grandparents were refugees of the Maoist revolution in China after the Second World War. Their reticence over that experience and how Huang suspects it may have had something to do with his family's migration to the U.S. also felt familiar with my own experiences.
In short, the exclusive nature of this book is why I enjoyed reading it so much. If you agree with Huang's socially liberal politics, then you are going to like this book. If you have a similar background as I do, then you are going to like this book. But even if you don't feel or have either, yet enjoy reading stories of people very different from you, then you are also likely to enjoy this book as it is both sincere, educational and entertaining.
An insightful, funny, and inspiring read. Huang has a unique, fresh perspective I can't get enough of. Also, must go to Baohaus!
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
This is a super entertaining memoir of Eddie Huang, a boy whose parents migrated to the US from Taiwan, and his story of being raised as a first generation American. I truly think every first generation individual will find something they relate to, especially those of Asian backgrounds. It is a bit chaotic, lots of tangents with stories about food/cooking, hip hop, substance use, and some of the stories were a bit vulgar in my opinion, but there were still a good number of kernels about rejecting the model minority myth and what it is like being the first individual (and oldest sibling) raised in a new culture. I added this to my list after seeing the TV show, and while the premise is the same, this is definitely not the same wholesome, family friendly storyline. Eddie’s voice really comes through, and some of the quips made me laugh but other parts just made him sound like a bully. While my story is different, I have also struggled with being the “other” and not living up to my skin tone. Eddie seems to always choose violence, fights, and drugs. I cringed reading about his description of some of the girls he has crossed paths with and felt embarrassed on their behalf that they were spoken about in this manner. The ending was a good wrap up — we see how Eddie has overcome a lot and while it didn’t make up for the middle, I did see character growth.
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
funny
slow-paced