Eat Everything before You Die: A Chinaman in the Counterculture

From Publishers Weekly
A professor of Asian-American studies weaves a knotty, dynamic tale of Christopher Columbus Wong, a grown orphan, and his quest to uncover his origins and process his life experiences: growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1950s, going to university during the Vietnam War, eloping with a Chinese immigrant seeking a green card and then taking up with a passionate hippie. Colorful characters float in a whirlwind of American counterculture. There's dying Uncle Lincoln, who might be Wong's father; Peter, his gay older brother with "a quick mouth ready to deal in two languages"; the inimitable Auntie Mary, known to kill pigeons from her balcony with "slingshot frozen peas"; and Wong's father-figure, Reverend Candlewick, who was defrocked for pedophilia. Wong describes Wick as a "messiah... who could alchemize race, culture, politics, sex, and rock 'n' roll"—a feat that is quite possibly the ambition of this very ambitious novel. But the non-linear and muddled narrative obfuscates the plot, even as it makes sense coming from a narrator so lost. Chan writes with sumptuous eloquence about food, and the moments in which boundaries between sibling, lover, mother and father shift and break down are deeply moving. This is a bumpy but vigorous read. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Christopher Columbus Wong, an orphan raised in a Chinese bachelor community in California, narrates his life as if it were a woklike jumble of ingredients on high heat. Through dreams, food, sexual interludes, and family anecdotes, Chris shares his story as a member of the "Chinese diaspora." His is a world peppered with a multitude of "uncles" (the men charged with raising Chris and his orphan peers), a domineering auntie, and a gay brother who hosts a TV cooking show. The novel centers on Chris' conflicted relationships with his two ex-wives: Winnie, a green-card seeker who marries his "uncle" Lincoln, and Melba, a counterculture Caucasian who throws him over for a more "authentic" Vietnamese refugee. Reminiscent of Frank Chin in Donald Duck (1991), Chan uses the theme of Asian American otherness as a foil for both social commentary and satire, but he lacks some of Chin's subtlety and coherence. Still, this debut offers an affecting, albeit chaotic, exploration of a young Chinese man's search for a sense of self in a country doing the same. Misha Stone
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book 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 pedophilia; 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.

About the Author
Jeffery Paul Chan is professor of Asian American Studies and of English at San Francisco State University. He co-edited Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian American Writers and The Big Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Chinese American and Japanese American Literature.


Buy from Amazon     Compare Prices

First novelist Chan (coeditor, The Big Aiieeeee!) concocts a veritable banquet of images as he follows Christopher Columbus Wong on a stream-of-consciousness odyssey through life in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-20th century. Chris suffers from serious identity issues. He is Chinese, but he cannot speak his language, and although orphaned, he belongs to a close-knit, self-made family that includes the pedophile director of a settlement house; a so-called Chinese uncle, perhaps his father, who is a part-time cook and full-time entrepreneur; a managing Chinese auntie who may have been his birth mother; a gay adoptive brother who becomes a popular television chef; both of his ex-wives; and a violence-prone Vietnamese rock star. As Chris seeks to define himself in this dense and challenging narrative, political upheavals in Asia send waves of new immigrants to America, the drug culture sweeps over his community, and the family eats everything from fish eyes to healthfood bars. This anguished and angry search for self will appeal to fans of literary fiction. Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


Buy from Barnes & Noble     Compare Prices