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Summary: This is the one you need
Review: Well written and stark... Open with the writing and real... You dont have to be gay or a cross dresser to really enjoy this...
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Summary: Not the One I Wanted
Review: I'm a big fan of Margaret Cho, and even saw her recent movie from which this book is based. The movie is a touching, revealing, and very funny look at her struggles with weight, drugs, and trying to star in a failing TV show. Unfortunately, her new book is not.What the movie had that the book did not was the real, human persona of Cho. Most of what she writes comes across as bitter and occasionally mean-spirited. She seems to have written this book as a vendetta against people in her past that have wronged her. Celebrities who use their fame to exact revenge through writing a book never seem to pull it off well. One story of a camping experience with her friends pulls us on her side, until we read about her treatment of those who wronged her, exposing a bitterness I didn't like. Cho has so much talent, and hopefully, after venting in this book, she can now rise above and shine as bright as I know she can. In the mean time, I suggest holding off on buying this book, and looking for the movie instead.
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Summary: Moving Autobiography
Review: I think my biggest surprise with this book was how serious it was. I wasn't fortunate enough to be able to see the stage show on which the book is based, but much of her life although couched with some hilarious witticisms is painful and sad. Drugs, alcholism, abusive relationships, and a big old healthy dose of self loathing thrown in for good measure. Reading about "All American Girl" and the deconstruction of the show made me wince. As always I'm baffled at the far reaching stupidity of network and studio executives. I was really moved by the end of this book, and wanted to be seated next to her so I could give her a great big bear hug. Rock on Moran!
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Summary: loved it!
Review: At first I thought this book wasn't as exciting as I had expected, but soon I could not stop reading. Some parts are sad, but then there are also parts where I laughed out loud. As a woman, I identified with her weight struggles. Those of you who are Asian or Asian American know it seems we are all expected to be skinny and petite, and excuse me but I have hips and am not a waif! Reading about Margaret's troubles and how she overcame them made me feel empowered! I loved this book. Not as funny as her act, but wonderful just the same.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT
Review: I LOVE this book. It's more than just a written translation of her act. Most of the 31-year-old's life story is sad, but the book has plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and it is thoroughly entertaining. I might be a bit biased, though, since I'm such a huge fan of Ms. Cho. If you're unfamiliar with her, the film version of her one-woman show of the same name airs on Pay-Per-View in June. So...watch that? Yeah. Margaret Cho ROCKS.
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Summary: This is your definition of survival!?!?!?!?
Review: I didn't see Cho's similarly-titled, stand-up performance, so I may be missing something. I admit that I started this book thinking Cho would write, "I am a proud, bisexual, Asian woman and this is how I learned to fight the Eurocentric heteropatriarchy!" Let's just say this book is nothing of the sort. Cho places herself in the long line of brilliant, but severely tortured, comics such as Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx, and Nathan Lane. These pages were pure tears of a clown. Most of the book details her being drugged and drunk. The last half of the book is her going from one useless, heterosexual relationship to the next. Even the end doesn't explain how she triumphed over her many demons. While she tries to explain it, I still detect much racial self-loathing in her words and actions. But maybe this her point. She too wants to explain how her failed show "All-American Girl" doesn't come close to defining her existence. She wants to show that Asian-American girls aren't all virginal and constantly studying for the SATs. This work does a decent job of showing a human trying to find her space outside of the boxes in which we place each other. So in that way, we do get to understand a talent who at times can be a genius. Yeah, this book was okay. I'd add it to Fong-Torres' "The Rice Room", hooks' "Wounds of Passion", Rebecca Walker's new autobio, and other useful biographical works of people-of-color-who-made-a-name-for-themselves-and-found-a-medium-in-which-they-shine.
Rating: 
Summary: Brutally honest
Review: It's a shockingly honest book that made me stay up till 3am to finish. I was expecting something like her standup routine, but I found her confiding secrets that most people would pay to hide. It made me relate, laugh, and cry, because it was so real and truthful. It's not Shakespeare, but it's compelling. She brings the reader through her journey and achievement of self love.
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Summary: A candid look at sexism in Hollywood
Review: Margaret Cho's "I'm the One That I Want" is the opposite of pre-packaged, phony interviews that you see everytime you turn on TV. While actresses go on TV and claim to just LOVE their co-stars, and to be "naturally" thin, Cho tells it like it is. She triumphed where many others failed -- her years as a traveling standup paid off when she got a TV deal,. Unfortuntately, misogony and racism in Hollywood turned her dream into a nightmare. Cho details the callous treatment that she, the star of her own show, received when things went wrong on the show. Her weight became the central focus to some execs, and some Asians groups turned on her when the show was received as stereotypical and backward. What should have been the pinnacle of her career turned into a time she would rather forget. Alcoholism and dead-end relationshops ensued.
This book is basically a cathardic (we presume) rant by Cho. It is an outrageous story, particularly in the same industry that routinely makes TV stars of rotund male standup comics (everyone from Kevin James to Chris Farley). The double standards are made all the worse when you consider that Cho wasn't fat. She was victimized by the Hollywood white male power structure, and women and minorities who internalize that message and turn on each other.
Although I appreciate the manifesto-style quality of this book, some of Cho's solutions seem a bit naive. It is going to take a lot more than women liking themselves to see attitudes in Hollywood change. Sexism and racism are institutionalized, and every high grossing movie starring an emaciated babe is contributing to that tradition continuing. It will take dismantling those institutions, or working from within, to see that change. Show biz is way behind the curve when it comes to gender equality, but it is also dangerously influential. Cho, and others like her, could spearhead a grassroots campaign to get big audiences for movies that show positive messages of women. Take it from the evangelicals and "Passion of the Christ"... money talks.
Rating: 
Summary: Not very funny, sometimes tedious, but some sparks
Review: I was not familiar with M. Cho, being an American living overseas for so long. So I thought that I would get acquainted with a different aspect of American culture and bring some laughs to my door-step. Though I found some passages funny and entertaining, her narration comes off as tedious and repetitive, infrequently humorous. Her tragic life seems dramatically sad, and Cho seems to want to bring laughter out of brashness and dismal situations. Congratulations for trying to pull herself out of so many self-defeating habits and for trying to find some humour there. I found her "new-agey" comments too superficial for interest. I good try, but the bleakness of her unhappy life is not salvaged by the humour, that seems too scarce for a notorious comedian. This is a review of her 4 CD audiobook.
Rating:
Summary: Rockin'
Review: I don't need Margaret to be funny in her autobiography, I only want that from her on stage. All I require of an autobiography is a life worth talking about, honesty, and the talent necessary to make me feel bonded to the author. I found that here. I was actually somewhat surprised by Margaret's simple yet profound writing style.
Fans coming to this book lookin for a laugh will be disappointed. Fans coming to this book to learn more about the serious side of Margaret, about alchoholism, about self-acceptance, depression, about addiction, and about degradation will find what they want here. I think the author of Prozac Nation said it best when she made reference to the fact that so many of her readers complained they found her autobiography "irritating" and she responded that it was exactly the effect that she was going for, because depression in it's sense of endlessness is irritating. One keeps hoping, while reading this book, that the depression is over, wanting to scream "snap out of it." Those of us who have lived with depression or have lived with someone who has depression can understand the feeling.
I recommend Cho's book for it's courage, honesty, and wit.
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