Customer Reviews

Aliens in America

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Sandra Tsing Loh is a wonderful writer. This book and her set of essays "Depth Takes a Holiday" showcase a new talent. She combines humor with a tight, very easy, flowing language. "Aliens In America" consists of 3 essays, each about her family and her father -- the retired aerospace engineer who decides to import another wife from China. This is a very insightful, fun book. It's short and will leave you asking for more. Follow this lady, she's good. She'll probably be the Dorothy Parker of 2000 and beyond.

I loved the audio version of this book. The print version probably doesn't do it justice, as so much of the impact is in the accents and inflections of Loh's performance. This is not a mean-spirited book. One can hear Loh's affection for her parents even as she pokes fun an their idiosyncrasies. As an audio reviewer I listen to many books, but Loh's earns top marks. It's a funny and touching tribute to our multicultural society.

I'd rather would have heard or seen the performances these stories are based on, simply because the spoken word with all its inflictions and shadings would have added to the mood of the pieces and made the subjectivity of them more obvious. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot, and I think it describes well the struggles a second generation immigrant has to go through while trying to adapt to the mainstream culture of the country her parents have moved to. And in contrast to the previous reviewer I think that Loh is not so sure whether it is better to burn all the bridges, and turn American, as she is trying to do as a young girl and as an adolescent, or to stick to the culture of her ancestors, as her father is doing. Aside from that, the stories are also quite funny in their descriptions of the battle of wits between her free-wheeling German mother, who is always looking for fun and luxury, and her Chinese father, who in the meantime braces himself for impeding disaster.

This is Sandra Tsing Loh's landmark work. In it, she weds her keen powers of observation with a story that is heartfelt and important. Readers (and listeners of NPR) who are familiar with her more pointedly comedic commentaries will relish this work, the full blossoming of a wonderfully unique writer. The landscape of this memoir is highly specific, but the themes are universal. It is both gorgeously written and highly affecting.

I was incredulous at the fact that the author had the audacity to dedicate this book to her father after reading her relentlessly cruel caricature of him. Don't read this book unless you want to wallow in the author's self-hatred, for I can so no other reason why she chooses to exude such acerbity and bitterness in describing her family. Sarcasm is a cheap attempt at humor in this book; it's the author's desperate attempt to make herself feel better by ridiculing others.

This book is horrible. It's not funny; it's not enlightening; it's not a literary treasure. I struggled to finish this book. I do not recommend it.