Customer Reviews

Honor & Duty

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read China Boy under duress for a Humanities Class, but what I discovered was a fabulous book written with heart wrenching detail of one boy's struggle to reconcile the past with the present and bridge the cultural rift between his Chinese roots and his American destiny. Honor and Duty shows us Kai Ting as an adult, a product of this struggle fought and won, embarking on one of the greatest challenges of his young life--WestPoint. Not only does this reflect the political climate of the times, the aura of that hallowed and mysterious institution, but of one man's reconciliation of his father's dreams and his own. Lee writes an account of Ting's progress through, and ultimately out of, the Point with a refreshing and intensely personal style. By the end of the book even a 19 year old female civilian student can intimately feel the pain and joy that Kai experiences.

A huge thank you to Gus Lee for bringing the story of Kai Ting to the world and for the experiences that created the character (I believe the two novels are largely autobiographical).

A phenomenal, beautifully written story...a must read!

This book is an absolute must for all who like China Boy, and for all who like good reading. Where China Boy was a little bit slow, Honor and Duty is over almost too fast (and this by about double the length :-). The struggle becomes humongous for Kai when he enters the Army, and his decision to go there. Who should he have more Duty to? His father, who preaches West Point as the best school of the world, or his Dababa, Uncle Shim, who, on one hand, teaches Kai to obey his father, but on the other hand he says "Hau nan bu dang bin". Good boys don't become Soldiers. A quick warining: If you are easily offended, you might not want to read this book, for it containst some swearing. I noticed this because I started to swear myself after I read this :-) This does not diminish the greatness of this book, though, and I highly recommend it.

Honor and Duty is just a wonderful book.

I read it and reread it until the pages were dog-eared, and lent it to my brother, who was Active Duty military at the time and he read it and kept it! The struggles that Kai goes through at West Point are nothing less than incredible. His personal story of Honor and Duty will speak to anyone, of any ethnic origin, military or not.

This is one of those keepers folks - buy it, read it, keep it.

This book has been deeply inspiring. As an ethnic Chinese living in America, reading this book has helped me answer questions about myself that I never even knew I was asking. Everything that Kai Ting went through seemed somehow strangely familiar to me even though I wasn't raised in the hood, never went to West Point, and am not even a boy.

Gus Lee is as powerful a writer as you will ever read. His prose is tight and flowing. This book is in no way an action thriller or mystery, but he keeps you on the edge of your seat as if it were. Contrary to the protests of some of the other reviewers, his characters are not one dimensional. They demonstrate very real conflicts and feelings. As we get to see the world through Kai's eyes, we get to know Kai, and we get an important social perspective into the tumultuous world of the 1960s. This is not just a book for Chinese Americans or for potential West Point cadets. It is a book for humanity. About humanity and what it means to find yourself.

This book taught me the honor of upholding your Eastern core while embracing Western culture. It showed me that it is possible to retain your own honor in the face of failure or defeat. And for that I thank Gus Lee.

Kai Ting, the boy we first met in Gus Lee's China Boy, grapples with racism and his father's expectations when he goes to West Point in the mid 1960's. Interwoven with the trials of harsh military academy life are the glimpses of a family beyond the breaking point: the alienated sisters, the larger-than-life father, the harsh white stepmother, and the fading memories of a long-dead mother provide a gripping emotional background. Furthermore, the reader learns quite a bit about both West Point and the changing attitudes of the 1960's. The irony is that once Ting gains acceptance within the military despite his Chinese heritage, he is alienated from the outside world of the anti-war movement by his uniform. It was quite powerful to see the boy from the mean streets of San Francisco grow up into a man of honor.

This book is a not only a first-rate story, but also is a great study of the conflict between several cultures (e.g., family, heritage, upbringing, the military, West Point, the Sixties) that shape Kai Ting's life. Gus Lee does a fantastic job of developing real, believable and thoroughly interesting characters, and really making the reader care about what happens to each of the people in the book. My only disappointment was that the book ended too soon! I wanted to read more! . . . unless the author's thinking was that he wanted the reader come up with his or her own continuation of the story, or perhaps we will someday see a sequel. I hope the latter is true.

So China Boy goes to West Point. Yes, there's a lot about that here, but this book is much more than a sequel. It is about a life experience that everyone should know about and appreciate. Anyone who has been through a standard military training program will appreciate the documentation of what that's like, will laugh out loud at much of the low, dark humor that one must learn to endure and even embrace, and will celebrate the protagonist's eventual triump over it all. And that's especially true for those who went through one of the service academies or a full-on military college with corps of cadets. What, he didn't graduate? Oh that. He might have become one of our greatest military leaders, right? Or he might have died in company grade in Vietnam along with so many of his countrymen. And the rest of us would not have had these wonderful books. I'll take the books, thank you.

And yes, I almost forgot, this is about how a Chinese-American boy came of age in a less than inclusive USA at the time. That's easy to forget for anyone who reads one of his books with a mind that's even half open, because you easily identify with the narrator, and forget about any differences between you and him, and realize you could be him. Put it this way, if you are an American with one gram of humanity in your being, you will finish the book with a strong sense of pride that Kai Ting and Gus Lee are your fellow Americans.

Never mind the critics who say Gus Lee is too macho for his work to be serious material for a multicultural curriculum that needs to be free from violence and unpleasant racial and gender implications. He writes about the human condition. He writes about life. He writes about living life to its fullest and surviving its worst moments with the best possible memories. He writes about the triumph of the human spirit. And that is good stuff. It is what we need to teach our youth today. If you need balance, find other books for timid souls, or for those who just can't appreciate how life well lived is a good lesson for all of us, even if the protagonist has a different gender or phenotype. Even if the setting is a place where they would never go.

This is a poignant story of an American-born Chinese who struggles with his cultural identity while enrolled as a cadet at the U.S Military Academy at West Point during the turbulent 60's. As one of only a handful of Asians at the nearly all-Caucasian academy, he faced obligatory racial stereotyping (not all Asians are math geeks!) and discrimination, since he had similar facial features as the enemy they were being trained to annihilate in Vietnam. Although Chinese-American readers will readily identify with the cultural issues faced by the protagonist, this is not a book just for a specific ethnic group. The protagonist portrays somewhat tragic relationships with his father, mother, stepmother, sister, and the many father-like figures in his life. There's even some romance in the story. But the main theme revolves around the author's beliefs in honor and duty. He draws striking similarities between the traditions of the ancient Chinese literary institution charged with interpreting Confucian classics, the Hanlin Academy (Hànlín Yuàn), with those of a fabled military academy in a much younger nation. The Confucian idea of "keji fuli", which means to sacrifice self-gain in deference to obeying codified duties, occurs throughout the book. The protagonist struggles with this concept at times, and has to choose whether or not to follow a path of honor and duty.

Highly recommended!

Note: For those who can read Chinese (probably not most Chinese-Americans unfortunately), the Chinese character for "Honor" as shown on the book's cover is incorrect (guang). That character represents honor as in glory or distinction (guangróng). The correct character for honor should be dé from dàodé, meaning honor as in virtue.

Honor and Duty and even better than China Boy.

I read this FICTION some time ago. Unfortunately, many take it as non-fiction. That's my knock on it, and other books of similar ilk. They take an unnecessary shot at a national icon, tending to help keep the cauldron of doubt boiling for many influential people. Ugh! What a bad idea!