Two Memoirs and a Novel by Asian American Authors: AAPI Heritage Month

 AAPI Heritage: Memoirs/Novel by Asian American Writers

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

Genre: adoption, biography memoir, Asian 
American

Published October 7, 2018; Catapult


My comments: All You Can Ever Know is an emotional and revealing memoir about one Korean adoptee's experiences as an adult connecting with her Korean birth parents who have also come to live in America. Nicole Chung knew that she was adopted as a severely premature baby whose prognosis did not look good for a healthy development. She later finds out the exact reasons her birth parents gave her up, and discovers she has two biological sisters. Even though her life with her American adoptive parents in Oregon was happy and healthy, none of these new revelations are easy for her to deal with, and at a time when she was starting her own family.

Nicole Chung delves into her own psyche and reveals to us her emotions, her fears and hopes growing up, and how she copes with the realities of her adoption and the convoluted procedures she had to go through to finally connect with her birth family. A must read for those interested in international adoptions and adoptees from Korea.

The book has won numerous awards. 

The author has a follow up memoir focusing on the middle-class American couple who were her adoptive parents and who raised her in a small town in Oregon, USA. The book, A Living Memory was published on April 4, 2023 by Ecco. In it, she also laments the inadequate and unequal access to health care that resulted in the early death of her American father, and the death of her American mother soon after from cancer.

Publisher's summary: a searing memoir of family, class and grief—a daughter’s search to understand the lives her adoptive parents led, the life she forged as an adult, and the lives she’s lost. In this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those who leave hardship behind, yet are unable to bring anyone else with them.

Stay True: A Memoir by Hua Hsu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publication: September 27, 2022; Doubleday

Hua Hsu, Bard College Professor of Literature, won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for memoir, Stay True

My review:

  

In this memoir, the author remembers and honors a college friend, Ken, who died in a mugging and senseless kidnapping while in his third year at UCLA. Hua thinks of the What Ifs that could have saved Ken from that death - what if they had gone swing dancing as Ken had wanted that night, what if he had gone back to Ken's party in the early morning so Ken would not have been alone during that mugging.

There are many reasons Hua and Ken became friends even though they had such different personalities. Both were Asian Americans, but one was Taiwanese-American and a new immigrant, the other a Japanese-American with deep roots. already established in the U.S. Their love of different kinds of music and movies, and their interest in analyzing everything for fun and intellectual sharing are only some of the things they did as college friends.

Deeply moving in parts, Stay True, the memoir, ultimately delves into the minds and hearts of young university students as they search for meaning and identity.

Yellowface

by 

R.F. Kuang, May 16, 2023, William Morrow, NetGalley

Genre: satire, literary fiction

I realized by a third of the way into the book that the title, Yellowface, refers to the old practice of using ethnic white actors to portray East Asian characters in film and on stage. 

The title was fitting for this novel, I thought, as the main character and book narrator, June Hayward, not only stole the unpublished manuscript of her Yale college friend - acclaimed Chinese American author, Athena Liu - but also tried to claim to be Chinese by changing her name from June Hayward to Juniper Song. Her book photograph also made her seem to be Asian. 

Athena's book detailed the World War II Chinese Corps of workers who went to Europe to help the Allies by doing the drudge work of war. June had to justify  knowledge of that subject matter and appear to be an expert also on the Chinese and Chinese history.

This was a complex novel as it was told from only June's point of view. I didn't know whether to hate or to pity her for her devious strategies to gain fame and fortune from the stolen manuscript and to maintain her false identity as a Chinese writer. 

I saw the book had two purposes, however, to show the history of Yellowfacing and racism, and also to reveal the pitfalls of the publishing industry for writers. June felt the publishing world's need for diversity, which led them to focus on promoting promising authors like Athena Liu, giving extra publicity and help to get a book on its way.

I thought this novel was a brilliant addition to literary fiction and Asian American literature.

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday