Customer Reviews

American Eyes: New Asian-American Short Stories for Young Adults

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American Eyes is a great book. It tells the whole world how it's like for us "Outsiders". The book says many true things about Asian people and how we live and think. I enjoyed the book because it reminded me not too be so obnoxious about having black hair, brown eyes and having parents who are traditional to thier culture. It teaches lessons like its okay not too be a "Blond blue eyed and tall". The story "House Painting" was a story I got addicted to. It told about a sister off at college coming home and the parents being very excited. Over all the book was great. For the children or adults who hate reading long boring stories, "American Eyes" is a book every one could enjoy and surely isn't boring.

Though the stories like "Blonde" and "Knuckles" read like childish stories, I found the rest of the book to be pretty interesting and easy to relate to. It's nice to know that I'm not alone in my dislike for Asian foods ("Fortune Teller") or my lack of knowledge of my ethnic language ("Summer of My Korean Soldier"). My favorites were "Fortune Teller," "Singing Apples," and "Summer of My Korean Soldier." The references to the different cultures were a learning experience. And the stories don't have happy endings, which is a life lesson in itself.

I bought this book knowing that it is a collection of short stories by Asian writers that is intended for young adults. However, I was not expecting a book written by young adults. That's what the story of this book reads like. The themes explored in this book are pretty cliched: do we really need another story about Chinese kids being embarassed by the ethnic food her mother packs for them for lunch? Not only are the topics cliched, their treatments can't be more standard. I believe that some of these stories could have been written by non-Asians who owns a Chinese-English dictionary.

I think the major problem with the stories in this collection is that they are too short. The book is only about 140+ pages, and it contains ten stories. A better collection would leave out some of the more sophomoric works, such as _Blonde_ or _Home Now_, and expand the excerpted novels.