Fresh Off the Boat in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 11, 2012 Sam rated it liked it

Shelves: 7-nonfiction, first-reads, read-2012, reviewed, authors-asian-descent-outside-asia

I received an advance copy of Fresh Off the Boat through a Goodreads giveaway.

The readers who will most enjoy this book will be those who already know of Eddie Huang, the young, brash, and outspoken owner of a Taiwanese bao shop in New York, called Baohaus. But even if you’re not familiar with Eddie, the book is still a pretty interesting coming of age tale told in an engaging manner.

I first became aware of Eddie when I stumbled onto his blog and tweets a year or two ago, and have caught some of I received an advance copy of Fresh Off the Boat through a Goodreads giveaway.

The readers who will most enjoy this book will be those who already know of Eddie Huang, the young, brash, and outspoken owner of a Taiwanese bao shop in New York, called Baohaus. But even if you’re not familiar with Eddie, the book is still a pretty interesting coming of age tale told in an engaging manner.

I first became aware of Eddie when I stumbled onto his blog and tweets a year or two ago, and have caught some of his articles/interviews in a few other outlets ever since. What you’ll get in Fresh Off the Boat is really a more in-depth development of the themes that he’s been training his eye on aboard those other platforms: food (of course), but also sports, music, culture, and Asian-American identity, plus ways in which these issues intersect or collide. The examination of these issues is all the more interesting because it’s filtered through Eddie’s unique voice, one that’s smart-alecky, slangy, hip hop-inflected, and thoughtful all rolled into one.

The book focuses on Eddie’s childhood in the suburbs of Virginia and Florida, the experience of growing up in an immigrant family, struggles to break out of “model minority” stereotypes, being an obnoxious kid dealing drugs and getting into fights, discovering his voice in an English lit course, becoming a lawyer for minute, all the way to the opening of the first Baohaus, with some anecdotes of defining “food moments” thrown in as well.

The book reads as if your wise-ass friend is just hanging out and shooting the shit with you, telling you about what shaped him as a person. It’s not especially deep (even though you see glimpses of depth) and, at times, it could’ve been more coherent as he jumps from one issue and incident to another, but since the book was a brisk read, the positives mostly outweigh the negatives. He mixes it up so the book doesn’t feel one-note. Sometimes the tone is light and playful—his asterisked footnotes calling back to lyrics from hip songs or just making a random, foolish comment are hilarious; other times the tone is earnest, especially in his struggles with his identity and wondering whether there was room for a kid like him to fit in.

My favorite parts of the book are when he talks about food, including an explanation of the nuances of a simple bowl of noodles in Taipei, a joke about how you just needed to add bread to any ethnic food and white people would feel comfortable with it, and the rationale behind his disdain for chefs who take another culture’s cuisine and say that they’re going to “elevate” it. You can really feel his respect for cooking and for food.

Meanwhile, the chronicle of Eddie’s troubles in school with the fights and attitude problems was a bit too drawn out for my tastes, but that’s probably because I couldn’t relate. It’s a memoir though, so who am I to say which parts of his life are more or less important to focus on? I did kind of wish we got more insight into his time building up Baohaus and then his other short-lived restaurant, but instead the books ends when Baohaus first becomes a success. Maybe that’ll be Fresh Off the Boat, part 2? The guy is still pretty young after all.
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May 02, 2015 Cheryl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: ddc-300, ddc-600, ddc-700, listened-to-it

Loving everything about it... though it's definitely not for everyone.

Brilliant mash-up of observation, language, crassness and insight, as well as hip-hop, boobs, aesthetics, cookery. It's a Hot Pot of Life through a strobe-like fast-paced prism of introspection and Ever-The-F***ing-Outsider experience.

Review brewing in my mind... More later. 5/2/2015 ...more

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