3.5
Fresh Off the Boat
ByPublisher Description
NOW AN ORIGINAL SERIES ON ABC • “Just may be the best new comedy of [the year] . . . based on restaurateur Eddie Huang’s memoir of the same name . . . [a] classic fresh-out-of-water comedy.”—People
“Bawdy and frequently hilarious . . . a surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and assimilation in America . . . as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan . . . rowdy [and] vital . . . It’s a book about fitting in by not fitting in at all.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
Assimilating ain’t easy. Eddie Huang was raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) immigrants—his father a cocksure restaurateur with a dark past back in Taiwan, his mother a fierce protector and constant threat. Young Eddie tried his hand at everything mainstream America threw his way, from white Jesus to macaroni and cheese, but finally found his home as leader of a rainbow coalition of lost boys up to no good: skate punks, dealers, hip-hop junkies, and sneaker freaks. This is the story of a Chinese-American kid in a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac blazing his way through America’s deviant subcultures, trying to find himself, ten thousand miles from his legacy and anchored only by his conflicted love for his family and his passion for food. Funny, moving, and stylistically inventive, Fresh Off the Boat is more than a radical reimagining of the immigrant memoir—it’s the exhilarating story of every American outsider who finds his destiny in the margins.
Praise for Fresh Off the Boat
“Brash and funny . . . outrageous, courageous, moving, ironic and true.”—New York Times Book Review
“Mercilessly funny and provocative, Fresh Off the Boat is also a serious piece of work. Eddie Huang is hunting nothing less than Big Game here. He does everything with style.”—Anthony Bourdain
“Uproariously funny . . . emotionally honest.”—Chicago Tribune
“Huang is a fearless raconteur. [His] writing is at once hilarious and provocative; his incisive wit pulls through like a perfect plate of dan dan noodles.”—Interview
“Although writing a memoir is an audacious act for a thirty-year-old, it is not nearly as audacious as some of the things Huang did and survived even earlier. . . . Whatever he ends up doing, you can be sure it won’t look or sound like anything that’s come before. A single, kinetic passage from Fresh Off the Boat . . . is all you need to get that straight.”—Bookforum
“Bawdy and frequently hilarious . . . a surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and assimilation in America . . . as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan . . . rowdy [and] vital . . . It’s a book about fitting in by not fitting in at all.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS
Assimilating ain’t easy. Eddie Huang was raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) immigrants—his father a cocksure restaurateur with a dark past back in Taiwan, his mother a fierce protector and constant threat. Young Eddie tried his hand at everything mainstream America threw his way, from white Jesus to macaroni and cheese, but finally found his home as leader of a rainbow coalition of lost boys up to no good: skate punks, dealers, hip-hop junkies, and sneaker freaks. This is the story of a Chinese-American kid in a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac blazing his way through America’s deviant subcultures, trying to find himself, ten thousand miles from his legacy and anchored only by his conflicted love for his family and his passion for food. Funny, moving, and stylistically inventive, Fresh Off the Boat is more than a radical reimagining of the immigrant memoir—it’s the exhilarating story of every American outsider who finds his destiny in the margins.
Praise for Fresh Off the Boat
“Brash and funny . . . outrageous, courageous, moving, ironic and true.”—New York Times Book Review
“Mercilessly funny and provocative, Fresh Off the Boat is also a serious piece of work. Eddie Huang is hunting nothing less than Big Game here. He does everything with style.”—Anthony Bourdain
“Uproariously funny . . . emotionally honest.”—Chicago Tribune
“Huang is a fearless raconteur. [His] writing is at once hilarious and provocative; his incisive wit pulls through like a perfect plate of dan dan noodles.”—Interview
“Although writing a memoir is an audacious act for a thirty-year-old, it is not nearly as audacious as some of the things Huang did and survived even earlier. . . . Whatever he ends up doing, you can be sure it won’t look or sound like anything that’s come before. A single, kinetic passage from Fresh Off the Boat . . . is all you need to get that straight.”—Bookforum
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesFresh Off the Boat Reviews
3.5
“An easy to read memoir about a regular boy. Fun, easy read to pass the time.”“I remember a new season of the show coming out and seeing an article about how pissed the real Eddie Huang was about the show. He said it was too happy and sitcomy and not a real reflection of his book and his life. In a way, I definitely agree with him, or at least I understand what he was saying. Fresh of the Boat the show is a feel good sitcom that does start off as a fish out of water story with deeper issues mixed in, but pretty quickly goes off the rails and becomes just another saccharine family show. Eddie's real life certainly pops in once and a while, but the show avoids almost all of the darker stuff (there is some of the racism in the beginning, but nothing as bad as he faced in real life). Every character is changed (his parents were physically abusive and sometimes it seems like they'd punch him right in the mouth just for funzies. And Emery is nothing like his real life counterpart). The show is entirely sanitized. On the other hand, no one would watch a show true to Eddie's life because Eddie is a racist, egotistical asshole. Seriously, he's a full blooded hypocrite who never accepts his that he may be wrong or be at fault and is real quick to blame everything on white people, or the government, or Chinese people who weren't Chinese enough for him. The dude, understandably, gets real offended and angry about Chinese stereotypes and slurs, but in the same fucking paragraph he's laying out a slew of stereotypes against other people and "cleverly" using a couple of punctuation marks to let him use the "N word". The real Eddie isn't the lovable misfit that is really just a misunderstood teddybear that stands up for himself and his family. The real Eddie is a narcissist who never did anything wrong (even if his wrap sheet says different). The dude is a piece of shit who at least has a few interesting stories to tell. I love autobiographies for the same reason I love Sci-Fi and Fantasy; they are a way to experience a life that I know nothing about and learn a little bit about what it means to be alive. Fresh Off the Boat is very eye-opening when it's about growing up in. family of immigrants in a time and place where they really weren't wanted and about the struggles and expectations of trying to keep your culture, but also survive in a new one. Unfortunately, we have to get all that through Eddie's lense, which means what we get is a series of out of order vignettes about whatever he wanted to talk about. I imagine this book to be exactly what you'd experience if you hotboxed with Eddie and he rambled on about his life all night. Sometimes it's a great story about standing up for himself or realizing his potential, but most of the time, it's a two page story about watching a basketball game where he tells us how fucking amazing he was a basketball and compairs himself to the greats or a page and a half description of some noodles he ate and how now he does them so much better than those stupid fucks back in Taiwan who never change their 100 year old recipe and the asian-fusion chef's who are fucking up 100 year old recipe. Do you want an entire chapter (and tons of references after) about how Eddie is the reason Obama got elected because Eddie knew about Obama before he was cool (and made T-shirts)? How about how Eddie cuts off all his old friends when he meets no ones because the old friends weren't cool enough (the entire book is a revolving door of characters that get dumped just as abruptly as they were introduced as nothing other than a name)? Maybe you want to hear about how cool everyone thinks Eddie is now, interspersed with him bodyshaming some dude or "clowning" on some guy because he's wearing the wrong clothes? I can tolerate an unlikable narrator in fiction because it's clearly a choice the writer made to tell the story the way they wanted to. Reading a douchebag talk about his life as if he had the worst hand dealt to him, but he succeeded because of how fucking perfect and awesome he was and how everyone says that now (seriously, it's not just me saying that; everyone's talking about how I'm the best. I hear it all over the place, "You know that Eddie Huang, he's just the best guy around. There has never been anyone better". Dude has a bigger ego than Trump). The beginning was hard to read because of how fucked up his home life was and how awful him and his family were treated. The middle was tough because of how awful Eddie treated everyone else. The last third was easily the hardest to read because it's just Eddie blaming the world for all the problems he caused ("Whiteness" and America are the villians in his story, while he is the ultimate Mary Sue-perman) all the while building himself up as the person we should all inspire to be, a pompous racist who is fueled by hypocrisy and a victim complex. Normally I appreciate an autobiography done without a ghost writer, told in the person's voice with no filter, but I'd much rather have read a biography someone else wrote about Eddie's life because this one feels more like a fiction novel than fucking Harry Potter. Dude is so up his own ass that he's a one man human centipede, gladly eating up his own shit like it's the fucking beef noodles he keeps talking about. At least the Eddie in the show is humble, compassionate, and someone you want to see win at life and not the bully who's downfall you would pray for on any other show. Fuck it, watch the show and skip the book. The show is better and you don't have to put up with the real Eddie and have him ruin show Eddie for you.”
“I’m not normally one for a memoir. I read this because I have a handful of Seniors reading it for a class assignment.
I actually really enjoyed this. There were literal laugh out loud moments, dark turns, terribly sad moments, and everything else you expect from a memoir.”
About Eddie Huang
Eddie Huang is the proprietor of Baohaus. He hosts “Fresh Off the Boat” for VICE TV, hosted Cheap Bites for the Cooking Channel, and co-hosted episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s The Layover. He’s written for Eater, The New York Observer, Grantland, and his own popular blog. He lives in New York City.
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