Reviews

“Everyone has funny stories about growing up in a wacky family, but few write about it with as much lively wit and self-deprecating humor as Korean-American author Annie Choi.” (Read the rest of the review here.)
-That’s Beijing Magazine

“Annie Choi’s memoir is a fantastically personal piece devoted to her mother’s strength and idiosyncrasies, as well as her own struggle to form an identity apart from her close-knit Korean heritage.” (Read the rest of the review here.)
-VenusZine

“A fresh, funny memoir that echoes the generation- and culture-clash anecdotes of fellow Korean American Margaret Cho…Choi is a gifted and witty writer…”
-Entertainment Weekly

“Mining the age-old tensions between mothers and daughters, Choi’s strong debut is an uproariously funny memoir of growing up with her Korean American family in Los Angeles. Many stories expose the specific struggles of children of immigrants. When she entered kindergarten, for example, Choi was placed in a remedial learning program because her school didn’t have an ESL specialist. Other stories focus on familiar mother-daughter battlegrounds (when her mother asks her to wear an ensemble that Choi describes as “appropriate for Paul Revere’s stable boy,” she writes, “I felt she had stopped loving me”) and on the universal adolescent feelings of a self-described “late bloomer”: “Anyone could confuse my back for my chest.” From the elementary-school memories of her mother’s tough-love academic views—”Don’t be baby! You not wear diaper no more. You have to practice so you get A”—to the phone exchanges when college-age Choi learns of her mother’s breast cancer, these are indelible, poignant, and often riotously funny scenes of a daughter’s frustrations and indestructible love.

YA: Teens, particularly those with immigrant parents, will howl with laughter over many of these growing up stories. GE.”
-Booklist

“Choi’s volatile relationship with her domineering, chronically dissatisfied mother is at the heart of this memoir, a funny and often moving account of growing up in a family of Korean immigrants. The parent/child compact in Choi’s childhood home was as follows: Mommy and Daddy’s job is to take care of the child; the child’s job is to study hard, go to Harvard and become a doctor. But Choi and her mother face each other across a seemingly unbridgeable divide: Annie has little desire to embody traditional Korean feminine virtues (and no desire to be a doctor); her mother—to whom social status is everything—cannot countenance her daughter’s “shortcomings.” Whether recounting the shame of bringing home a B-plus on a fourth-grade spelling test (a clear indicator that she’s destined for an inferior institution) or the greater horror of having to wear Korean clothes to American school (”The fun of soup bring Spring” reads one pair of her tracksuit bottoms), Choi adds acid wit—mixed with compassion—to her descriptions of immigrant life in the San Fernando Valley. This is that rare book that delivers more than it promises; Choi tackles the theme of mother/daughter conflict with grace and humor.”
-Publisher’s Weekly

Interviews

Catch a short interview with me in July 2007 (Volume 18, Number 7) issue of KoreAm Journal. The cover story is about Olympic skier Toby Dawson. Hey, he’s just like you and me except he went missing in a crowded market in Pusan at three and then won a bronze medal and then reunited with his birth father in Korea.

Listen to an interview with yours truly on UpFront Radio. My segment’s halfway through, after the one on cricket.

Cara Seitchek of Small Spiral Notebook interviews me. I discuss character development, my mother’s reaction to the book, and shitting where you eat.

Quotes

“Hilarious and heartrfelt–an exasperated valentine to Annie Choi’s unforgettable Family.”
-Jancee Dunn, author of But Enough About Me

“It’s good. I mean, I wouldn’t read it.”
-My brother

“I think maybe you OK at this writing. Maybe. Maybe not.”
-My mother