Fresh Off the Boat was almost ignored because of the title and cover, showing a typical Chinese family. Eddie Huang, I thought, would be a displaced person telling a sentimental tale in bad English. The book is all that - yet also refreshingly funny. Huang, a son of Taiwanese immigrants to the US, tells of growing up in Florida with a "gangster" father and a "manic" mother who remained so because "Chinese people don't believe in psychologists". Huang remembers how desperately he wanted to be white, but how Western food and later an affinity for hip hop (music and related language) changed all that. There will be phrases that don't compute as you listen to Huang reading his memoir, but that doesn't stop the flow of stories, many about being at the end of Ching Chong Chinaman taunts. Striving not to be a Chinese cliché (whatever that is), Huang rebels during childhood and as an adult when he defies his parents and walks away from a legal career to open BaoHaus, a Taiwanese bun hangout in New York. Success is his two-finger salute.
