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A Thousand Wings
 
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A Thousand Wings [Hardcover]

T. C. Huo (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)


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Book Description

April 1, 1998
A deft and artful blend of politics, history, and human emotion graced by surreal imagery, A Thousand Wings is the tale of one man's courtship of another through the food and stories of their shared heritage. T.C. Huo moves between present-day San Francisco and Vietnam-era Laos, as Fong Mun, the cook, tells Raymond of a land governed by ancient traditions and threatened by a war that will bring the death of a culture thousands of years old. Fong Mun's journey from the far provinces of Laos, through a refugee camp in Thailand, to a housing project in Oakland, represents a very contemporary immigrant experience, but one seldom told in fiction. As a gay man, Fong Mun is doubly an outsider, but through food and the stories that are inseparable from it, he will make his connection, first to a new culture, and then to a new love.
*T.C. Huo's delicate and startling imagery and wholly original approach to storytelling mark him as a major new voice in Asian-American fiction.
*This is one of the few novels to address the Southeast Asian experience in America.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A gay youth comes of age in his native Laos, flees to a Bangkok refugee camp during the Vietnam war, then makes a home for himself in America in this slack first novel from Huo. Fong Mun is a caterer with a past. Living alone in San Francisco, he suppresses his yearning for more human contact than is offered by his job as a caterer. Then he meets Raymond, a young Laotian who has lost his father, and soon Fong Mun is cooking for Raymond and telling him the story of his life. Very informative on the modern history of Laos, and enlivened by wonderful glimpses into a Laotian kitchen, the novel is dramatically limp, loosely constructed and plagued by what seems a proficient but slightly hesitant grasp of English. And so the story of Fong Mun, from his romances and life as a refugee to his success as a caterer and cookbook writer in present-day San Francisco, never quite rises above its beginnings as a charming but inconsequential reminiscence.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Huo alternates between present-day San Francisco and the 1970s in Laos and Thailand in telling the story of a refugee gay man who seeks a new life and new love. San Francisco caterer Fung Mon discloses a life of dislocation and relocation as he cooks for his new love interest, a younger Laotian immigrant who was raised by his mother after his father became a war casualty. As Fung lovingly examines each food ingredient, memories of past meals and a lost way of life emerge. As a boy, Fung saw his quiet, provincial life blasted as the Communist regime exacted its toll: every tree and shrub was counted among family assets, students marched down the streets shouting proclamations, and school became paramilitary indoctrination. To avoid Fung's conscription into the army, his family sent him to Thailand, where he kept his true nationality secret but was eventually sent to a Thai refugee camp, anyway. Huo movingly conjures one man's experience as a person at two removes from the elusive mainstream. Whitney Scott

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Dutton Adult; First edition. edition (April 1, 1998)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0525942807
  • ISBN-13: 978-0525942801
  • Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,853,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:    (0)
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1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Thousand Wings, March 19, 2001
By 
Michael S. Zieser (Kansas City, KS USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Thousand Wings (Hardcover)
This book is a literary gem. It chronicles the life of an immigrant from Laos to America and vividly paints an accurate picture of the tragedy of the communist takeover of Laos. Symbols crafted by angst are interwoven into a realistic story of the loss of culture and homeland. Complicated by the fact that Fong Mun, the main character is gay, a complex and nostalic look at his past is colorfully revealed to the reader. This a wonderful human story and is poetically crafted. Huo's first book is a beautiful and passionate book about survival and the human spirit. I hope he continues writing.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Not just wispy, but pathetic, June 30, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: A Thousand Wings (Hardcover)
Although I do not mean to underestimate the pain of a Chinese youth losing his home in Laos, the author does not seem to realize how comparatively lucky he was (or he and his character were) to have a (Chinese) network in Thailand to help get out and get restarted. Ethnical Laotians suffered more than unexpressed desires! Still, he writes effectively about some of the Pathet Lao depredations of the family business and disruption of education.
The fantasy of the Laotian American is puerile in the worst sense and the attempt to do a Southeast Asian _Like Water for Chocolate_ fails.Writing about a wimp doesn't have to be wimpy!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Sensual yet realistic and very informative, March 25, 1999
This review is from: A Thousand Wings (Hardcover)
I really enjoyed this book although I am more used to tales of emmigration from a Hispanic American perspective. In this book the art of cooking serves to demonstrate how we absorv our cultural heritage and proceed to reproduce it at a later stage in our development. The protagonist is aware of his own weaknesses but accepts them and lives out a life with many interruptions, yet still he focuses on the essential truths that will make his life work in the states or wherever he finds himself. I really enjoyed it.
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