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katymm's review
2.0
Given the title, I was expecting this book to be about an Asian-American experience, but the majority of the book is a collection of Yang's essays on disparate topics that have nothing to do with Asian-American identity. 'The Souls of Yellow Folk' is such a misleading title, if not wholly appropriative for aligning Asian-American issues with black issues.
majolo57's review against another edition
3.0
This book is a collection of a decade’s worth of essays from various venues. Not all of of them are addressed directly toward topics you might expect from the title. The essays are grouped thematically in four untitled sections. Their original publication dates range from 2008 to 2017, and the dizzying way that decade played out is probably responsible for the slightly off-balance sensation I had in reading the book. By halfway through, I picked up the habit of peeking at the end of each piece to know what year it was written, in hopes of being able to ground my reaction with some sense of how the topic (e.g., mass shooting, dating apps, etc.) would have been playing out in the public consciousness at the time. In all, the book did not feel coherent enough to be satisfying. I wonder if adding a conclusion to bookend the introduction might have helped me feel better able to put my reactions together and make sense of it all.
klibri's review against another edition
1.0
He's got his finger on the wrong pulse, the putrid blob of bro culture and anti-pc dinosaurs. This is a fremdscham-inducing collection of clunky essays that are a long decade old, none of them written specifically for this book. The slivers of interrogation related to the title generally end up stained with an uncle to incels view.
mikolee's review against another edition
3.0
A series of well reported essays on varied topics from the APA Virigina Tech shooter to white supremacy. Some of the essays I greatly enjoyed and learned so much from. A couple I was surprisingly irritated by. I need a moment to process why the one on Eddie Huang sparked this reaction.
2amreader's review against another edition
1.0
This title is grossly misleading. Some essays touch on Yang's identity as Asian-American, but others do not. The title is a disgusting attempt to appropriate DuBois's famous text.
Next, in the essays that talk about Yang as an Asian-American man, he is misogynistic, whiny, and bitter. He is resentful toward Asian American communities: “Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving middle-class servility.” He is obsessed with picking up white women: “Yes, it is about picking up white women. Yes, it is about attracting those women whose hair is the color of the midday sun and eyes are the color of the ocean.” He talks repeatedly of becoming an American alpha male, even while acknowledging that "there is no masculinity whose constitutive predicate is not the domination of women.”
While the emasculation of Asian-American men is something I do not dismiss, his response is to hate women and fixate on white women. Throughout this whole collection of essays, he only mentions 2 Asian women: Amy Chua, author of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, and Constance Wu, the actress who plays the mom in Fresh Off the Boat. Chua provides the context in which he talks about his relationship with his parents, mostly his father. And Wu appears in one small paragraph in the essay about Eddie Huang, chef and the inspiration behind Fresh Off the Boat.
It is clear that Yang hates himself. Now that I've read this book, I hate him too.
Next, in the essays that talk about Yang as an Asian-American man, he is misogynistic, whiny, and bitter. He is resentful toward Asian American communities: “Let me summarize my feelings toward Asian values: Fuck filial piety. Fuck grade-grubbing. Fuck Ivy League mania. Fuck deference to authority. Fuck humility and hard work. Fuck harmonious relations. Fuck sacrificing for the future. Fuck earnest, striving middle-class servility.” He is obsessed with picking up white women: “Yes, it is about picking up white women. Yes, it is about attracting those women whose hair is the color of the midday sun and eyes are the color of the ocean.” He talks repeatedly of becoming an American alpha male, even while acknowledging that "there is no masculinity whose constitutive predicate is not the domination of women.”
While the emasculation of Asian-American men is something I do not dismiss, his response is to hate women and fixate on white women. Throughout this whole collection of essays, he only mentions 2 Asian women: Amy Chua, author of the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom, and Constance Wu, the actress who plays the mom in Fresh Off the Boat. Chua provides the context in which he talks about his relationship with his parents, mostly his father. And Wu appears in one small paragraph in the essay about Eddie Huang, chef and the inspiration behind Fresh Off the Boat.
It is clear that Yang hates himself. Now that I've read this book, I hate him too.
steve_t's review against another edition
3.0
This is a strange book. I feel like there are two main themes that spread through the different essays of this book. One theme is the focus of, sometimes sympathetically, of unpopular young men. The books looks semi-critically at “losers” and “terrorists,” and seems to determine that they were loners angry at a world that they were unable to express themselves in. I think that is an important question to look at, why are young men feeling so disconnected. But I am worry about how sympathetic the writer seems to be, and what the indirectly proposed solutions he gives are. For example, Yang looks at a school shooter, and recognizes himself in the killer, not by any action, but by a mutual feeling of being invisible. Rather than discuss the victims, or masculinity, Yang discuss the killer’s poetry, his loneliness, his humanity, his inability to connect with women. In the next chapter, he describes an Asian pick up artist group all about overcoming Asian cultural norms and getting blonde, white women. When putting everything together, I get a bit of an incel vibe, a sympathy by the writer with people that think that if a man cannot get a woman, that they must be an inherent failure.
But I think the issue, which Yang kind of address, is the lack of identity. Both Yang and the killer are described as having lost touch with their Asian identity and heritage, and that they are individuals. The killer "did not think of himself as Asian; he did not think of himself ethnically at all,” and “In lieu of loving the world twice as hard, I care, in the end, about expressing my obdurate singularity at any cost.” Perhaps it is because I believe in the idealism of multiculturalism (though I have yet to see it put into radical practice), but I worry about the uncompromising belief in one’s own individual rationalism, that the reason so many people are alone (and I say this as a second generation immigrant), is because we have lost so many of those roots that ground us not just in space, but in time.
A second theme is on that rational individual. I won’t go into it too much, but many of the focuses of the essays are on individuals who achieve and exist almost by themselves. Not to say that they were alone, but that they are winning, or at least fighting, against established norms and cultures.
There is also something about this books that shouts about masculinity. Although the title is, “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” is it actually to and for men. For example, after describing a sexually suggestive Pepsi commercial, of “one-handed war hero and presidential aspirant” watching Britney Spears, Yang writes, “The commercial did not merely suggest, but actually demonstrated in the most palatable way, that no man had the dignity to rise above this fate.” In other words, it is man’s fate to a be a dog to his sexual desires. I don’t think that this is a healthy way to look at the world.
Some of the essays are about a decade old, and it reads that way. It has a time capsule feel and I don’t think it has incorporated many of the new ideas in the social ether. There was a criticalness of the writer to the ideas in his book, but the criticalness felt more like an acknowledgment that a core pillar, thus making many of the subjects sympathetic.
While I didn’t like most of the essays, I did legitimately enjoy, We Out Here, Is it OK to be White, What is White Supremacy. I disagree with some aspects, but I thought that they were interesting and well written. They were also the most recent essays, and I think both that Yang got better and he started writing about topics that I was more interested in. And, though I find parts of it very questionable, “The Face of ...” has something important and worth saying.
But I think the issue, which Yang kind of address, is the lack of identity. Both Yang and the killer are described as having lost touch with their Asian identity and heritage, and that they are individuals. The killer "did not think of himself as Asian; he did not think of himself ethnically at all,” and “In lieu of loving the world twice as hard, I care, in the end, about expressing my obdurate singularity at any cost.” Perhaps it is because I believe in the idealism of multiculturalism (though I have yet to see it put into radical practice), but I worry about the uncompromising belief in one’s own individual rationalism, that the reason so many people are alone (and I say this as a second generation immigrant), is because we have lost so many of those roots that ground us not just in space, but in time.
A second theme is on that rational individual. I won’t go into it too much, but many of the focuses of the essays are on individuals who achieve and exist almost by themselves. Not to say that they were alone, but that they are winning, or at least fighting, against established norms and cultures.
There is also something about this books that shouts about masculinity. Although the title is, “The Souls of Yellow Folk,” is it actually to and for men. For example, after describing a sexually suggestive Pepsi commercial, of “one-handed war hero and presidential aspirant” watching Britney Spears, Yang writes, “The commercial did not merely suggest, but actually demonstrated in the most palatable way, that no man had the dignity to rise above this fate.” In other words, it is man’s fate to a be a dog to his sexual desires. I don’t think that this is a healthy way to look at the world.
Some of the essays are about a decade old, and it reads that way. It has a time capsule feel and I don’t think it has incorporated many of the new ideas in the social ether. There was a criticalness of the writer to the ideas in his book, but the criticalness felt more like an acknowledgment that a core pillar, thus making many of the subjects sympathetic.
While I didn’t like most of the essays, I did legitimately enjoy, We Out Here, Is it OK to be White, What is White Supremacy. I disagree with some aspects, but I thought that they were interesting and well written. They were also the most recent essays, and I think both that Yang got better and he started writing about topics that I was more interested in. And, though I find parts of it very questionable, “The Face of ...” has something important and worth saying.
lmdo's review against another edition
2.0
Some of the individual essays were great; but as a collection it was sorely lacking and the title doesn't help.
athst's review against another edition
5.0
This is a fine collection of essays. Yang has an incisive, clear way of writing. I found the nuance a refreshing change from most of the polarized discussion of these topics that you usually get online.
Despite the name of the book, it's really a collection of his essays on a variety of different topics. The essays are organized into four sections, which I would roughly describe as (1) Asian-Americans, (2) modern internet culture and politics, (3) sexuality and relationships, and (4) race.
While I get some of the criticisms on here about feeling mislead from the title, I'd also argue that if you only think the first 3 essays are relevant to the Asian-American experience, you should probably take a moment and reevaluate that you may be thinking too narrowly.
Despite the name of the book, it's really a collection of his essays on a variety of different topics. The essays are organized into four sections, which I would roughly describe as (1) Asian-Americans, (2) modern internet culture and politics, (3) sexuality and relationships, and (4) race.
While I get some of the criticisms on here about feeling mislead from the title, I'd also argue that if you only think the first 3 essays are relevant to the Asian-American experience, you should probably take a moment and reevaluate that you may be thinking too narrowly.
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