The Dim Sum of All Things

Rating:
Summary: SCANDALOUS! HILAROUS!
Review: My god, I swear I know all the characters in this book. Living in the Bay Area, the writer is dead on in her descriptions of the people, the places and the zeitgeist of 2nd and 3rd generation Asian-Americans (or any of us hyphenated-Americans who straddle two cultures). Keltner is so FUNNY, even daring in revealing Lindsay's inner dialogue. I was late to work several mornings because I couldn't put the book down. It is so real, so hilarious and brimming with ideas that all of us could discuss about identity, race, love/romance/sex and more. You've got to read it for yourself.

Rating:
Summary: This book sucks
Review: She's a sellout. And who the hell came up with this little blurb in the book description??? "Where Asian cuties meet the white guys who love them?" Nah nah nah, i get enough asian man hatin' from maxine hong KINGSTON and amy tan. Welcome to the club, Kim Wong KELTNER, just another self-hater. Isn't there a 0 star option???

Rating:
Summary: A Sellout Work from a Self-Hating Person - 0 Star
Review: Sorry, but I have nothing nice to say about an Asian-hating racist. The follow excerpts will prove that either she's a totally whitewashed sellout who had absolutely no contact with her Chinese identity and exploit it anyways for money, or she's a non-Chinese racist looking to make Asians look as bad as possible.

I read some disturbing excerpts from Keltner's novel in an Asian Week article, Chinese American Chick Lit:

http://news.asianweek.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=a06fc17b09a7855bc5f282fe50c21c86&this_category_id=171

One excerpt from "The Dim Sum of All Things":
"Lindsey looked up for a moment and fixed her eyes on a skinny Chinese man sitting a few tables away. His bad posture and lack of muscles, paired with his camellia-white skin, inspired another vignette."

If a WHITE person wrote something like this, then they would rightly be called an Asian hating racist.

How idiotic can she be?! Like there are no pasty pale and scrawny WHITE men? Even Keltner seems to know they exist in abundance ... and quite a few of them have an Asian fetish and Asian girlfriend.

Why is she pointing out his 'Chineseness' and making that an issue? That's textbook racism!

But since she is an "Asian American," she is given a free ride. In fact, she is praised as being another glorious example of "chick lit" -- "Asian" or "Chinese" to boot! -- and credited with "de-mystifying" Asian culture!

A note of caution here for the White troll and/or Whitewashed idiot who is going to say something like, "Well she is writing about fictional characters. So nah to you Mr. Pissed Off Asian." Well my response would be that Keltner has made it clear -- both publicly and repeatedly -- that her characters and her novel are based on her REAL LIFE experiences. So "The Dim Sum of All Things" is essentially an auto-biography!

As the title for my thread suggests, if Mrs. Wong Keltner was White, then she would be considered to be an anti-Asian racist! Since she is Asian American , what is she then? A super-self-hater? Self-racist? Amy Tan Junior?

I find the following excerpt from the Asian Week interview of Keltner to be truely enlightening on these matters:
"Wong Keltner describes in her book a real-life situation where a friend complains to Lindsey that Asian girls are "stealing all of our men."

"Her friend is referring to all the Caucasian guys that she wants to go out with who have Asian girlfriends. Her friend says, 'Oh, I don't mean you, you're white anyway.' "

So there you have it, Mrs. Kim Keltner is really WHITE. So, therefore, she is an Asian hating racist!

Rating:
Summary: A 20 something American
Review: The book is great, I couldn't put it down and stayed up into the wee hours of the night reading. I think the author captured true events of a 20 something single girl that obviously has an ethnic background. And, how difficult it can become for a person with an ethnic appearance to fit in during certain situations. I think this is true for any girl no matter the color of their skin or age.

The author captures San Franciso's China Town perfectly as I remember it my first visit on the way to pick up my adopted daughter in China.

I am saving the book for my daughter to read when she get's older.

Rating:
Summary: Amusing but annoying at times for ABC women in their 20-30s.
Review: The book started off well, with great stories about being ABC, not being able to speak Chinese, and trying to figure out how to fit in as an American and hold on to the Chinese culture. Towards the end, the main character has some serious insecurity issues, and annoyingly paranoid about prejudice and what her family will perceive when she dates a caucasian guy. It's lightly entertaining, but the story became a bit disjointed, and I didn't feel the author achieved the potential of the material. I would advise anyone to buy this book used, it's not worth the retail price.

Rating:
Summary: Growing up Chinese American in San Francisco -
Review: The funniest book I've read this year. Recommended to me by a friend. I suspect it would be funniest to those who'd understand the jokes - 80's-born, 20-something Chinese Americans, esp. growing up near or in a Chinatown. The back cover has some funny questions that give you an idea of what topics are covered, including interracial dating. By the way, love the title!

Rating:
Summary: reinforces sterotypes
Review: The jeist of Ms. Wongs story is that her protagonist is somehow able to transcend her own inherent predjudice against white people by ending up with a white boyfreind. This would come off as ironic if the protagonist was a bit more self aware but she's neurotic and self absorbed and essentially not cute..though shes trying to be. With the exception of the Grandmother (who is a gem) the characters of this 20 something story come off as too adolescent to be interesting to an adult reader.

Rating:
Summary: Hit the nail on the head
Review: The thing that caught my attention was that this was an Asian woman writing about Asians. I know there are some authours out there, such as Amy Tan, but not many. While Amy Tan's books may be more culturally accurate they are also more dramatic. This book is lighter and a faster read; what I imagine Kelly Rippa might endorse.

I did enjoy reading this book, especially about the hoarders. I can't imagine being an asian in the USA and not running into at least one hoarder. This book did have some very amusing moments and was certainly accurate on some occasion.

I did however feel the book had added fluff in it that could have been omitted. I would agree with another reader that the pants at the part scene could have been left out. I didn't really understand why the author would have made the one character part Chinese and what man would take that much crap from some neurotic woman anyway.

Overall I enjoyed the book and I would recommend it to my friends

Rating:
Summary: Fun, but I wanted something more
Review: The very second the reader is informed Lindsey, our protagonist, is attracted to white men, the reader knows she's being introduced to a new author who isn't afraid to tackle the tricky stuff. Keltner's decision to be forthright about Lindsey's issues with Asians and whites was a good one. Unfortunately, the the "tricky stuff" is almost always anecdotal and is rarely revisited:

A coworker asks Lindsey to translate a Japanese phrase and seems confused when Lindsey explains she's Chinese. The subject never comes up again. The coworker is never challenged because she never makes a significant appearance again. She's like a product placement. A white man standing on line behind Lindsey in a supermarket asks if the rice Lindsey is about to buy is "for the restaurant." Lindsey wonders briefly why he feels he has a right to ask her that - a brilliant and interesting moment - but she takes this issue no further. A young white woman tells Lindsey that Asian women are stealing all the white guys, but Lindsey is "different." Lindsey is "normal..." Lindsey wonders about the woman's comment, but quickly moves on to a new thought. She never indicates whether or not she's heard this complaint before (I've heard it thousands of times). If she has, does she disagree with it? If so, why?

So, even though Lindsey thinks about all of the above situations, the same issues never come up again throughout the book, making them only mildly amusing anecdotes with no real punch. The author fails to capitilize on all the funny, foolish things people say to Asians. I felt like Keltner had a checklist and instead of exploring all of the moments on her checklist, she added them in randomly and checked them off so she could move on.

There's a wonderful passage in the book that recounts Lindsey's experience in a painting class. The scene is written poignantly and it was the first time I felt connected to Lindsey. It was the first scene that made Lindsey's feelings about not being the "proper" Asian matter.

Keltner tries too hard to be funny, which hurts the narrative. The quirky "asides" she uses to describe blind dates or Lindsey's daydreams only succeeded in pulling me out of the book and wondering why she chose to use that tactic. The humor would have porbably worked best with a first-person narrator. In the end, keltner should have relied on straightforward storytelling to get her humor across.

Pau Pau, however, rocks!

Rating:
Summary: I didn't get it
Review: There are many people out there who obviously liked this book a great deal. I'm not one of them. I found Weltner's characters unsympathetic and the plot boring. Sorry -- I may be a "Hoarder", but I much prefer Amy Tan, Lydia Minotoya, and Joy Kogawa, all who wrestle with issues of multiculturalism without flattening the issues into flippant sound bites.