From the Bookshelf of Words Between Worlds…

Free Food for Millionaires

Min Jin Lee

Start date: February 1, 2018

Finish date: February 28, 2018

Discussion: February 2018 Discussions

Why we're reading this: Free Food for Millionaires is our February 2018 book! This book was the book that started our discussion.…more
[close] Free Food for Millionaires is our February 2018 book! This book was the book that started our discussion. It's about a young person living in New York and coming to terms with both being Asian and American. For a few of us in this group, this theme resonates deeply and hopefully it will resonate with you as well!

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Showing 2 of 4 topics — 13 comments total

February 2018 Discussions

Part Two and Part Three Discussion Questions
By Simone · 3 posts · 33 views

last updated Feb 28, 2018 05:46AM

Living up to your parents' standards, hiding your dreams
By Simone · 5 posts · 42 views

last updated Feb 20, 2018 01:39PM

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Feb 18, 2018 Katy O. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-reads, z2018-fave-backlist

I LOVED this book! After reading and loving PACHINKO last spring, I knew I would need to come back to read this one and I am so so so happy that I did. Casey is such a flawed character, but she's flawed in so many of the same ways that I am.....and this made me love her so so so much. She may just be my new favorite book character, with her stubbornness and unwillingness to do what is expected of her. I love the way this book addresses immigration and class and wealth, too. The gambling addictio ...more

61 likes · Like · see review

Feb 19, 2018 Catie rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction, book-club, contemporary, new-york, read-2018, cultural-korea

@words.between.worlds IG Book Club - February 2018

5 likes · Like · see review

Feb 17, 2018 Diana rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2018

This 560 page long beauty was well-worth the time. I was completely immersed in the lives of Casey Han and her family & friends in NYC. FFFM not only depicts the lives of Korean immigrants and their daily struggles, it also felt like a coming of age story of our protagonist, Casey Han, as she tries to navigate though her life after Princeton. I loved Casey. Though she had her flaws (who doesn’t), she seemed like such a “real” character- a friend or coworker could be Casey. I dislike it when char ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 08, 2018 Rachel Rooney rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, 2018, diverse-author

Free Food for Millionaires is the story of Casey Han, a Korean-American Ivy League college grad, at loose ends and trying to figure out her future.

I thought about reading this book last year after finishing Pachinko, but someone I know had dismissed it as chick lit, so I passed on it. I am so glad I changed my mind. Just because a novel is about a woman at a certain time of her life does not mean it is chick lit or women's fiction or what-have-you. Are The Art of Fielding or This Is Where I Lea ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 06, 2019 Trish (readtmc) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019

****1/2 rounded up

Min Jin Lee has written a cast of flawed, fleshed out, and all too human characters that I could read about for another 560 pages.

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Apr 29, 2018 Kate rated it really liked it

FFFM tells the story of Casey Han, a recent Princeton graduate who immigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. As the story opens, she’s at a family dinner with her parents at the beginning of her first summer as a college graduate. She’s moved in with them, but hasn’t told them that she’s deferred admission to Columbia Law School and has no plans for her post-college life. She also hasn’t told them that she’s been dating a white American, which would be an even more egregi FFFM tells the story of Casey Han, a recent Princeton graduate who immigrated to the United States with her family as a young child. As the story opens, she’s at a family dinner with her parents at the beginning of her first summer as a college graduate. She’s moved in with them, but hasn’t told them that she’s deferred admission to Columbia Law School and has no plans for her post-college life. She also hasn’t told them that she’s been dating a white American, which would be an even more egregious offense to her traditional Korean parents. Casey is clearly of a different generation and a different world than her parents. As a result she felt
"If her rotten choices hurt her, well then, she’d be willing to take that wager, but it was hard to think of letting her parents down again and again. But her choices were always hurting her parents, or so they said. Yet Casey was an American, too -- she had a strong desire to be happy and to have love, and she’d never considered such wishes to be Korean ones (123)".
This tension between the Korean values and wishes of her family and her American values and wishes runs through the book. We also see themes of religion, class, and race.

As this first night (predictably) ends explosively, Casey’s life is irrevocably changed and the rest of the book tells the story of her attempting to (re)gain a sense of self and purpose in a world that isn’t governed wholly by her parents’ traditions or her white American peers’ privilege. The things Casey knows best are shopping and hats, although she has an ivy-league education, and she has to reinvent her life a lot more quickly and urgently than she had planned.

This book was immersive in a way that, even though I really feel that I didn’t relate to Casey, I felt so invested in the characters that I couldn’t wait to keep reading. The characters were so real that at times they felt predictable, simply because they seemed like real people and they acted like real people would. Their flaws were real flaws, and their successes, therefore, were real successes.

I felt that there were some loose ends that could have been tied up more cleanly, or alternatively omitted altogether, but the book was panoramic in scope even despite these loose ends and gave us a comprehensive look at the immigrant experience for this family and their new community in New York.
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Jan 11, 2020 Vanessa ❤️ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
This is a long, slow read BUT in all the best ways! You become so emotionally attached to these perfectly flawed and real characters, that only Min Jin Lee can do!

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