Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman In The Counterculture (Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies) [Paperback]

Jeffery Paul Chan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2004 | Series: Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies

In this vibrant and original novel, Christopher Columbus Wong, an orphan son of a Chinatown bachelor community, is trying to invent a family for himself while all around him American popular culture is reinventing itself with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. As the country's mores shift and change, Christopher recalls his own disputed origins, and finds himself on a wild journey with his gay older brother, Peter, a pan-Pacific chef and public television's 'Peter Pan'; the defrocked, deranged, and eroding ex-director of a Chinatown settlement house, Reverend Ted Candlewick, dismissed for paedophilia; the sharp-eyed, conspiring matriarch Auntie Mary, the bridge between the conflicting values that make up this cultural stew; and the dying Uncle Lincoln, a remnant of the transient bachelor society, and, quite possibly, Christopher's and Peter's father.The unique cast of characters complicating Christopher's quest also includes his ex-wives: Winnie, a Hong Kong immigrant looking for a green card, who leaves him only to become Uncle Lincoln's wife; and Melba, an American orphan of the counterculture, who abandons Christopher when she finds a more authentic Asian from the most recent refugee communities spawned at the end of the Vietnam War. Throughout Christopher's voyage to discover his past, the imaginary China he and his family have envisioned in their American diaspora collides with the reality of China at the end of the millennium.Set against the backdrop of America's wars in Asia and the assimilation of that experience - the refugees, the stereotypes, the food - "Eat Everything Before You Die" is an ironic commentary on the identities the children of Chinese American immigrants concoct from their questionable histories, cultural practices, and survival strategies. Chan's riotous story will appeal to general readers, particularly those interested in the Asian American experience, and will be of strong, enduring interest to students and scholars in Asian American Studies.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A professor of Asian-American studies weaves a knotty, dynamic tale of Christopher Columbus Wong, a grown orphan, and his quest to uncover his origins and process his life experiences: growing up in San Francisco's Chinatown in the 1950s, going to university during the Vietnam War, eloping with a Chinese immigrant seeking a green card and then taking up with a passionate hippie. Colorful characters float in a whirlwind of American counterculture. There's dying Uncle Lincoln, who might be Wong's father; Peter, his gay older brother with "a quick mouth ready to deal in two languages"; the inimitable Auntie Mary, known to kill pigeons from her balcony with "slingshot frozen peas"; and Wong's father-figure, Reverend Candlewick, who was defrocked for pedophilia. Wong describes Wick as a "messiah... who could alchemize race, culture, politics, sex, and rock 'n' roll"—a feat that is quite possibly the ambition of this very ambitious novel. But the non-linear and muddled narrative obfuscates the plot, even as it makes sense coming from a narrator so lost. Chan writes with sumptuous eloquence about food, and the moments in which boundaries between sibling, lover, mother and father shift and break down are deeply moving. This is a bumpy but vigorous read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Christopher Columbus Wong, an orphan raised in a Chinese bachelor community in California, narrates his life as if it were a woklike jumble of ingredients on high heat. Through dreams, food, sexual interludes, and family anecdotes, Chris shares his story as a member of the "Chinese diaspora." His is a world peppered with a multitude of "uncles" (the men charged with raising Chris and his orphan peers), a domineering auntie, and a gay brother who hosts a TV cooking show. The novel centers on Chris' conflicted relationships with his two ex-wives: Winnie, a green-card seeker who marries his "uncle" Lincoln, and Melba, a counterculture Caucasian who throws him over for a more "authentic" Vietnamese refugee. Reminiscent of Frank Chin in Donald Duck (1991), Chan uses the theme of Asian American otherness as a foil for both social commentary and satire, but he lacks some of Chin's subtlety and coherence. Still, this debut offers an affecting, albeit chaotic, exploration of a young Chinese man's search for a sense of self in a country doing the same. Misha Stone
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 297 pages
• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr (October 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295984368
• ISBN-13: 978-0295984360
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,181,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Soup Tastes Great, January 16, 2005

By 

Samantha Friedman (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman In The Counterculture (Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies) (Paperback)

Jeffrey Paul Chan's fictional tale of Chris Columbus--Chinese American everyman-- and his richly idiosyncratic extended family, endows an already fascinating cultural history with the tangible tastiness of sex, drugs and fermented red bean. My senses were so taken with the novel's swirls of fish paste and fresh sweat that I almost missed the striking syntactic nuggets of social comment (i.e. "the bamboo curtain") fried up by the author.

One of my favorite things about the book is how much its structure mimics its central metaphor.  My relationship to the text, especially upon completion but also throughout, was the same I might have if presented with one of the fishy melanges described so beautifully within it. As I taste, I am not positive if I recognize cilantro or parsley -- is that a hint of ginger, even?  Rather, the flavors mingle in such a way as to blur my discrete understanding of each ingredient. Likewise, while I wouldn't trust my accuracy if asked to recreate a recipe from the Neon Moon to the commune, the soup tastes great.  Ultimately, I am thankful that I am not granted a clarity that Chris, the protagonist, himself doesn't have.  As the reader, I am offered the vicarious experience of displacement; I am dual, too; I am myself not always sure why I ended up West when I tried to go East.  And I don't think I'd want it any other way.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The book is good, title is bad - "Chinaman" is a derogatory term, January 7, 2006

By 

Chan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman In The Counterculture (Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies) (Paperback)

I enjoyed the book and support the author's work. But I want to make sure people who are just browsing do not mistaken the word Chinaman to be a general term like Englishman or Frenchman, of which the equivalent would be Chineseman, not the offensive Chinaman. Webster's defines "n-gger: a black person - usually taken to be offensive" and "Chinaman: Chinese - often taken to be offensive."