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hardcover $23.95
Thomas Dunne Books
Paddyfield.com
Powells.com (USA)
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More reviews by Melanie Ho
Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller.North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com.
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Everything Asian by Sung J Woo
An immigrant's tale told in a series of vignettes forming two complementing stories serves as the main basis for SUNG J WOO's debut novel EVERYTHING ASIAN. Half of the short chapters detail the Kim family's experience as they transition to their new life in suburban New Jersey. This story is woven with alternating chapters of the second broader story, sketches of life in Peddlers Town, a shopping mall filled with stores similar to the one owned by the Kims.
While EVERYTHING ASIAN is a story of the immigrant experience in which culture clash plays a strong role, it strays from the typical (adult) view and goes both small and large: small in the sense that protagonist Joon (David) Kim is just twelve and large in that the novel's second story points towards a bigger picture. Peddlers Town is its own community -- shop and restaurant owners coming and going as the Kims work their way towards the American Dream.
The novel begins when David Kim arrives in New Jersey with his mother and older sister Sue. The family is greeted by David's father, Harry, who was the first of the Kims to move to America and has now been living in New Jersey for five years. He has opened a shop -- "East Meets West" -- which sells imported trinkets from all over Asia. The family works in the shop, while struggling with a new language and recreating a family of four in a completely different world.
Told through the lens of a young immigrant, SUNG J WOO tells the common stories of childhood in a fresh light. Harry takes his son fishing in a desperate attempt to repair a father-son bond that has been left on hold. What happens as the two fish is not unpredictable, but it is a charming story nonetheless. There are plenty of other usual, but new, experiences throughout the book -- eating American diner food for the first time, picking out English names and cooking spaghetti.
Alternating between David's story is that of the shopping mall. Woo introduces the readers to a raft of characters: Harry's best friend, a Korean who also owns a shop in the same complex; a woman who opens a rival store, and an immigrant from the Soviet Union with personal attachments to the merchandise he sells. Each chapter is told from a different point of view, allowing the reader to absorb a fuller concept of the Kim's surroundings.
Though the vignettes are individually done well, and the plot is cohesive, but the constant change in point of view, some of which are fast-forwarded to the future, when both David and his sister are adults, can be distracting and detract from the providing a variety of different new immigrant views. A single narrator for the Kim story might have better balanced the constant change in story-tellers which accompany the Peddlers Town story in the novel.
Still, Woo (a Cornell graduate with an MFA from New York University), has left us a thoughtful work, pleasant to read and and one which tells the Asian immigrant story in a unique way. Those with an interest in writing might also turn to the author's website and blog (http://www.sungjwoo.com/), which hints at the laborious nature of writing by publishing an image of a large stack of paper that became his final manuscript and detailing the importance of revision by confessing that at one point the draft included alien kidnapping.
Melanie Ho
03/09/2009
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Melanie Ho is a writer who has reviewed for publications in Hong Kong and Canada. |
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