A unique voice with a provocative point of view.
Up-and-coming celebrity chef Huang serves up a raw memoir recounting his life as an angry young man chafing under generations of stifling Chinese tradition and all-encompassing American "whiteness."
Three things inform the multitalented restaurateur's identity: food, basketball and hip-hop. Although not necessarily in that order, each is infused in virtually every sentence, many of which are laugh-out-loud funny. All three provided the socially conscious author with the succor he needed to make it as an Asian "OutKast" growing up in the Deep South. The son of a former Taiwanese gangster father and a money-obsessed mother, Huang spent his formative years posting up with his style-obsessed buddies and generally bucking authority and the status quo. The author renders his portraits of his many colorful friends and family as vividly and spectacularly as his recipe for beef noodle soup. Huang may have an opinion on everything from religion to RZA, but his deeply contemplative nature deflects any accusations of self-righteousness. His history of violence is more problematic, however. Physical violence both on the streets and inside the home punctuated the author's younger years, and while the latter is thoughtfully unpacked and explored, the former is too often glorified. It could have all easily gone quite differently for Huang. At one point, he was arrested after driving a car into a crowd of threatening rivals and was packed off to Taiwan in order to escape punishment. However, he used the opportunity to reconcile his Asian heritage and focus his unrelenting energy on the things he really wanted out of life. The inspiring result became his trendsetting East Village eatery, Baohaus.
A unique voice with a provocative point of view.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-679-64488-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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BOOK REVIEW
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