As a second-generation Chinese-American, Eric Liu has grown up with an awkward relationship to race and ethnic identity. He can follow a conversation in Chinese, although he would have problems if he tried to take part in it; as for the written language, he is functionally illiterate. He would be the first person to question which of his personality traits are "Chinese" or "American," "Asian" or "white," or none of the above, and The Accidental Asian is, in fact, a rigorous self-examination--not merely about the costs and benefits of assimilation, but about whether assimilation should even be viewed in those terms.

Whether he's recalling his adolescent frustration with "Chinese hair" that just wouldn't permit itself to be styled, examining the history of Chinatown, or pondering the mixture of fear and fascination with which China is viewed by Americans, Liu writes with admirable personal intensity. It doesn't matter whether you consider The Accidental Asian to be a memoir or a batch of interconnected essays; once you've read it, you will be forced to consider for yourself what place, if any, race has in America today (but even more so tomorrow).

In this candid, well-crafted memoir, Liu, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, explores his identity as a second-generation Chinese American. Although he was raised to assimilate, Liu recalls that his discomfort as an adolescent when trying to fit in was problematical because his hair and skin tone marked him as different from those around him. He also shares haunting memories of traveling to China and visiting his grandmother in Manhattan's Chinatown, events that engendered ambivalent emotions both of alienation from and attraction to his heritage. Liu's concerns about the concept of "Asian American," which he regards as based on physical characteristics rather than shared ethnicity, are rendered thoughtfully, as are his positive feelings about intermarriage. (His wife is a white Southerner with a Jewish grandmother.) He is impassioned, however, about the fallout from a scandal surrounding the activities of democratic fund-raiser John Huang. When Liu calls New York Times columnist William Safire "a Jew and defender of Jews" for unfairly stereotyping Asian Americans because of Huang's questionable actions, this strikes a discordant note. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Part memoir, part treatise, this slim book will sound familiar at first to any Chinese: being called banana, nerd, yellow, slant-eyed, buck-toothed. And Liu describes typical clashes between Chinese parents and their Americanized offspring. But Liu, a political commentator and speechwriter for Clinton, at present attending Harvard Law School, cogently discusses such topics as Chinese being called the "New Jews," the meaning of Chinatown, fear of the "yellow planet," and problems of assimilation. In particular, Liu offers insightful and original comments about being Asian American, a construct that is totally false but one he has learned to use because of the many positive consequences. Liu has researched his topic well, citing Peter Kwong's and Ronald Takaki's works, among others. This well-written and poignant book is especially recommended for non-Asian readers.?Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Liu's themes in this essay collection are the assimilation process undergone by his China-born parents and his own feelings about others regarding him as an Asian rather than an American. The pieces about his father, who achieved a solidly middle-class station, examine how much he separated over time from China and concentrate on family photographs or his father's favorite American idioms, such as "I mean business!" These writings about his father partake of the wistfulness common in many immigrant experiences: pride at having succeeded, modified by regret at the severance with customs and contacts in the home country. Liu's reflections on his own 29-year-long life touch on quotidian instances of people reacting to him as "Asian." Annoyed by such assumptions, Liu turns a phrase into a thesis in this way: "I want to be one of a kind, not one of my kind." Surmounting racial identity underlies Liu's gracefully expressed idealism and may attract younger readers exasperated by the ethnic emphasis of these times. Gilbert Taylor

Provocative musings on the subjects of race and identity from the perspective of a second-generation Chinese professional. Liu, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, recounts his past and present struggles with his Chinese identity in a society into which he has easily assimilated. Caught between two cultures, Liu finds himself at home in neither. In trying to define something uniquely Chinese about his upbringing as the son of two educated upper-middle-class professionals, Liu recalls his father's ``honorable'' struggle to hide from friends and family members his years on dialysis after his kidneys failed. ``As a Chinese boy in an American world, I was accustomed to facades,'' he states. But in retrospect he wonders if this concern with image and normalcy is particularly Chinese or simply human. Now, as a Harvard Law student married to a white woman, Liu is conscious of his race primarily when racism rears its head, as it did in the recent scandal over whether the Chinese government attempted to influence the 1996 presidential election. Otherwise, Liu's sense of himself as an Asian-American is purely ``accidental,'' an invented identity thrust upon him and other Asians who have almost nothing in common. They do not, for instance, share a common religious faith or heritage, which makes it even harder for them to identify as a distinct group. Ambivalent throughout as to the values of particularism versus universalism, Liu finally emerges as a universalist who chooses not to incorporate Chinese ritual into his wedding. ``I certainly won't want to infect my Chinese-Scotch-Irish-Jewish children with bloodline fever. I won't force them to choose among ill-fitting racial uniforms,'' he writes. Incisive, balanced, and frank, The Accidental Asian deals persuasively with the often-overlooked struggles Asian-Americans face in defining their identity in the turbulent American landscape. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

“Eric Liu has written a powerful memoir, a memoir that renders the Asian American experience with a depth and a passion reminiscent of Richard Wright's Black Boy. It is a major contribution to the literature that defines what it means to be an American.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

“A unique-and uniquely American-memoir, suffused with smarts, elegance, and warmth.”
—Time

“More than a reminiscence of growing up Asian in America, it is an homage to Liu's Chineseness, and to America.”
—Los Angeles Times

“Wonderfully spirited. . . . Remarkable in its adamant refusal to buy into the party line of identity politics . . . Liu is fair to all sides of any issues he discusses.”
—The New York Times Book Review


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Random House editor Jon Karp: In THE ACCIDENTAL ASIAN, Eric Liu has written a personal and a political exploration of race very much in the tradition of books by Henry Louis Gates, Shelby Steele, and Richard Rodriguez. The difference, of course, is Eric's vantage point. While there have been many political memoirs by blacks and Latinos, fewer Asian-American voices have been heard. In Eric Liu, we have one of the most dynamic and intelligent young writers in the country. He is only 28 years old and he has already been featured on the cover of Newsweek as a leading voice of Generation X. He started a national magazine as a student at Yale University, after which he was hired by Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Ultimately, he moved to the White House, where he became the youngest speechwriter on President Clinton's staff. Recently, he has been a weekly commentator on MSNBC and a regular speaker on college campuses, while studying law at Harvard and writing for Slate. As you may have surmised, Eric is a bit of an overachiever.

His book is at turns piercing in its insights into the politics of race and poignant in its depiction of the lives of assimilated Asian-Americans. Here's one example: Eric tries to read a journal about his father's early life in China, but he can't make any sense of it because the journal is written in Chinese, a language he barely knows. That is just one example of the distance between one generation and another, and it serves as a dramatic starting point for a fascinating intellectual journey.

for? That bracing question animates every page of The Accidental Asian, a powerful work from one<br> of the nation's leading young voices. In these personal and poignant reflections on assimilation,<br> Eric Liu articulates a vision of American identity that will provoke and inspire. For Liu, the price of<br> assimilation became clear when he tried to read a memorial book about his father's life, composed in Chinese, <br>and found himself staring at a blur of indecipherable characters. There in his hands was the measure of his <br>inheritance. Liu, meanwhile, has watched with both       wonder and concern as a pan-ethnic Asian American <br>identity has taken shape. Here now is a race that   offers a new source of roots--but also tightens the hold that <br>color has upon our minds.<br>Like so many in the second generation, Liu doesn't know whether to embrace, resist, or redefine assimilation--<br>and ends up doing all three at once. He

"Eric Liu has written a powerful memoir, a memoir that renders the Asian American

experience with a depth and a passion reminiscent
of Richard Wright's Black Boy. It is a major contribution to the literature that defines what it means to be an American."

--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"The Accidental Asian is an intelligent, moving and painfully instructive story of an Asian American life, and will certainly become
essential reading for all those who would ask what is the face--and heart--of an imminent America."
--Chang-rae Lee, author of Native Speaker

"        Incisive, balanced, and frank, The Accidental Asian deals persuasively with the often overlooked struggles Asian Americans face in
defining their identity in the turbulent American landscape . . . Provocative musings on the subjects of race and identity."                                

--Kirkus Reviews

Eric Liu, twenty-nine, has been a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and a commentator for MSNBC. A regular contributor to Slate,
he has also written for The Washington
Post Magazine and USA Weekend. After founding The Next Progressive, an acclaimed journal of opinion, he edited the anthology Next:
Young American Writers on the New Generation. He is a graduate of Yale College and is now enrolled at Harvard Law School.

As large numbers of second-generation Asian Americans come of age and try to find their psychological place in America, Liu's book can serve as a partial road map. For others, it can help them begin to understand the struggles of the "model minority" that often gets overlooked in this country's dialogue about race. This book is an admirable attempt to fill that void. Liu's voice is intelligent, thoughtful and, most of all, honest. But that voice gets increasingly lost as the book goes on, and readers will need some determination to make their way through it.