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Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman In The Counterculture (Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies) | 
 enlarge | Author: Jeffery Paul Chan
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.50
Buy Used: $0.51
You Save: $21.99 (98%)
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1474318
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 297
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.8
ISBN: 0295984368
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780295984360
ASIN: 0295984368
Publication Date: October 31, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Ex-Library Book;Stained Edges Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this vibrant and original novel, Christopher Columbus Wong, an orphan son of a Chinatown bachelor community, is trying to invent a family for himself while all around him American popular culture is reinventing itself with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. As the country's mores shift and change, Christopher recalls his own disputed origins, and finds himself on a wild journey with his gay older brother, Peter, a pan-Pacific chef and public television's 'Peter Pan'; the defrocked, deranged, and eroding ex-director of a Chinatown settlement house, Reverend Ted Candlewick, dismissed for paedophilia; the sharp-eyed, conspiring matriarch Auntie Mary, the bridge between the conflicting values that make up this cultural stew; and the dying Uncle Lincoln, a remnant of the transient bachelor society, and, quite possibly, Christopher's and Peter's father.The unique cast of characters complicating Christopher's quest also includes his ex-wives: Winnie, a Hong Kong immigrant looking for a green card, who leaves him only to become Uncle Lincoln's wife; and Melba, an American orphan of the counterculture, who abandons Christopher when she finds a more authentic Asian from the most recent refugee communities spawned at the end of the Vietnam War. Throughout Christopher's voyage to discover his past, the imaginary China he and his family have envisioned in their American diaspora collides with the reality of China at the end of the millennium.Set against the backdrop of America's wars in Asia and the assimilation of that experience - the refugees, the stereotypes, the food - "Eat Everything Before You Die" is an ironic commentary on the identities the children of Chinese American immigrants concoct from their questionable histories, cultural practices, and survival strategies. Chan's riotous story will appeal to general readers, particularly those interested in the Asian American experience, and will be of strong, enduring interest to students and scholars in Asian American Studies.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The book is good, title is bad - "Chinaman" is a derogatory term January 7, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed the book and support the author's work. But I want to make sure people who are just browsing do not mistaken the word Chinaman to be a general term like Englishman or Frenchman, of which the equivalent would be Chineseman, not the offensive Chinaman. Webster's defines "n-gger: a black person - usually taken to be offensive" and "Chinaman: Chinese - often taken to be offensive."
 The Soup Tastes Great January 17, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Jeffrey Paul Chan's fictional tale of Chris Columbus--Chinese American everyman-- and his richly idiosyncratic extended family, endows an already fascinating cultural history with the tangible tastiness of sex, drugs and fermented red bean. My senses were so taken with the novel's swirls of fish paste and fresh sweat that I almost missed the striking syntactic nuggets of social comment (i.e. "the bamboo curtain") fried up by the author.
One of my favorite things about the book is how much its structure mimics its central metaphor. My relationship to the text, especially upon completion but also throughout, was the same I might have if presented with one of the fishy melanges described so beautifully within it. As I taste, I am not positive if I recognize cilantro or parsley -- is that a hint of ginger, even? Rather, the flavors mingle in such a way as to blur my discrete understanding of each ingredient. Likewise, while I wouldn't trust my accuracy if asked to recreate a recipe from the Neon Moon to the commune, the soup tastes great. Ultimately, I am thankful that I am not granted a clarity that Chris, the protagonist, himself doesn't have. As the reader, I am offered the vicarious experience of displacement; I am dual, too; I am myself not always sure why I ended up West when I tried to go East. And I don't think I'd want it any other way.
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