Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir

Product Information

I’m happy people of color are able to see a reflection of themselves through [ Fresh Off the Boat],” he wrote on Twitter Tuesday night, “but I don’t recognize it. You can’t flash an ad during THE GAME with some chubby Chinese kid running across the screen talking shit about spaceships and Uncle Chans in 2014 because America has no reference. Eddie Huang was raised by a wild family of FOB ( fresh off the boat ) immigrants-his father a cocksure restaurateur with a dark past back in Taiwan, his mother a fierce protector and constant threat. Young Eddie tried his hand at everything mainstream America threw his way, from white Jesus to macaroni and cheese, but finally found his home as leader of a rainbow coalition of lost boys up to no good- skate punks, dealers, hip-hop junkies, and sneaker freaks.

The themes of culture, race, identity, and fighting stigmas and stereotypes is universal, which makes this book a fantastic read.If you use my affiliate links below, not only will you get a special offer, but it’ll help support the costs to maintain this blog! Network television never offered the epic tale highlighting Asian America’s coming of age; they offered to put orange chicken on TV for 22 minutes a week instead of Salisbury steak … and I’ll eat it; I’ll even thank them, because if you’re high enough, orange chicken ain’t so bad. Food is a powerful influence in any community – food is a cornerstone of culture, which traverses all of the communities and circle’s he’s been a part of.

Huang was exposed to cooking through his parents; his mother prepared traditional Taiwanese dishes at home, and he learned American regional cuisines through cooking at his father's Orlando restaurants. An entertaining memoir of an unforgettable personality sharing the trials and tribulations of growing up the child of successful Taiwanese FOB hustlers; who carved out their own slice of the American Dream for themselves; and children. This is the story of a Chinese-American kid in a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac blazing his way through America's deviant subcultures, trying to find himself, ten thousand miles from his legacy and anchored only by his conflicted love for his family and his passion for food. But even his dad told him and his brothers to love America because it is the land of opportunity, the likes of which they couldn’t get in Taiwan. They spout off about the American Dream or Only in America as if they’re about to rob the next great fighter from Brownsville.

Everything we know about his murder, the two alleged killers, and a recent new arrest ahead of the January 29 trial. Literary critic Dwight Garner, reviewing in The New York Times, commented on Huang's "bluster" and crude language, but appreciated the author's humor and observations on American culture.

Just make A Chink’s Life … With Free Wonton Soup or Soda: A reverse-yellowface show with universal white stories played out by Chinamen. Eddie Huang is the thirty-year-old proprietor of Baohaus—the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the night—and one of the food world’s brightest and most controversial young stars.Eddie Huang is hunting nothing less than Big Game here--a question, a conversation, an argument: Who "are "we? ABC’s approach “was to tell a universal, ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian-Americans resembling moo go gai pan written by a Persian-American who cut her teeth on race relations writing for Seth MacFarlane. We gotta hold the viewer’s hand through this because they’ve never been inside an Asian-American home before.