Everything Asian A Novel

by Woo, Sung J.

• ISBN13: 9780312385095
• ISBN10: 0312385099
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-07-20
• Publisher: Griffin

Summary

You're twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed at lovely Newark Airport. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years, and although he's nice enough, he might be, well--how can you put this delicately?--a loser. You can't speak English, but that doesn't stop you from working at East Meets West, your father's gift shop in a strip mall, where everything is new. Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim.Sung J. Woo's short stories and essays have appeared inThe New York Times,McSweeney's, andKoreAm Journal. His short film was an audience choice screening of the NYC Downtown Short Film Festival 2008. A graduate of Cornell University with an MFA from New York University, he lives in Washington, New Jersey.You're twelve years old. A month has passed since your Korean Air flight landed at lovely Newark Airport. Your fifteen-year-old sister is miserable. Your mother isn't exactly happy, either. You're seeing your father for the first time in five years, and although he's nice enough, he might be, well--how can you put this delicately?--a loser. You can't speak English, but that doesn't stop you from working at East Meets West, your father's gift shop in a strip mall, where everything is new. Welcome to the wonderful world of David Kim. Set it a New Jersey suburb in the early 1980s,Everything Asianis narrated by David Kim, whose family has just been reunited in America. David's relates the dramedy of his family's first year together in the United States with humor and pathos. His observations extend to Peddlers Town, the rundown, struggling shopping mall where his parents have a store. The family faces competition at the mall; they literally have to fight fire; they attempt to befriend Americans. They celebrate a birthday at a bowling alley and cook a turkey on Thanksgiving. Through it all, the Kims try to understand what it means to be a family in their new country. "In this charming tale of family, community and the struggle for understanding, young Korean immigrant David Kim learns to acculturate to a new American life. After five years on their own in Seoul, 12-year-old David, his big sister and mother reunite with his father in Oakbridge, N.J. Now known as Harry, David's father has a gift shop in a rundown strip mall called Peddlers Town . . . Woo eschews immigrant cliches to focus on complicated familial relationships and surprising, sympathetic characters; alternating between humor and melancholy, Woo's text strikes a true chord while drawing readers into its strange, strip-mall world."--Publishers Weekly "Loosely woven together from revealing vignettes about the interconnected characters that share 12-year-old protagonist Dae Joon Kim's world, Sung Woo's debut novel is a well-measured, carefully laid out storycloth filled with tenderness and great warmth. After five years of separation, Dae Joon (soon to be David), his sister In Sook (soon to be Susan), and their mother arrive from Korea to be reunited with their near-stranger of a father. The family, who together run an Asian import gift shop in a small New Jersey mall, must somehow re-establish their relationships with one another. Alternately painful and funny--and sometimes both--Woo perfectly captures the disorientation of a young boy caught amidst difficult family dynamics, negotiating a strange new world filled with both loss and discovery . . . Highly recommended."--Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program "A tender, funny, beautifull

Author Biography

SUNG J. WOO's short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and KoreAm Journal. His short film was an audience choice screening of the NYC Downtown Short Film Festival 2008. A graduate of Cornell University with an MFA from New York University, he lives in Washington, New Jersey. Visit his Web site at www.sungjwoo.com