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Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters
Contributor(s): Choi, Annie (Author)
ISBN: 0061132225     ISBN-13: 9780061132223
Publisher: Harper Perennial
OUR PRICE:   $15.29  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: April 2007
Qty:
Annotation: Meet Annie Choi. She fears cable cars and refuses to eat anything that casts a shadow. Her brother thinks chicken is a vegetable. Her father occasionally starts fires at work. Her mother collects Jesus trading cards and wears plaid like it's a job. No matter how hard Annie and her family try to understand one another, they often come up hilariously short.

But in the midst of a family crisis, Annie comes to realize that the only way to survive one another is to stick together . . . as difficult as that might be. Annie Choi's "Happy Birthday or Whatever" is a sidesplitting, eye-opening, and transcendent tale of coping with an infuriating, demanding, but ultimately loving Korean family.

Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - Asian & Asian American
- Biography & Autobiography | Women
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2006043658
Physical Information: 0.63" H x 5.78" W x 7.98" (0.41 lbs) 256 pages
Themes:
- Ethnic Orientation - Korean
- Locality - New York, N.Y.
- Geographic Orientation - New York
- Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic
- Cultural Region - Northeast U.S.
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:

"Mining the age-old tensions between mothers and daughters, Choi's strong debut is an uproariously funny memoir of growing up with her Korean American family in Los Angeles.... [T]hese are indelible, poignant, and often riotously funny scenes of a daughter's frustrations and indestructible love." -- Booklist

A humorous story about the relationship between a first generation Korean-American and her parents, an alternately funny and poignant narrative showing how it feels to have one foot firmly planted on each side of the Pacific Ocean.

Annie Choi's very Korean mother never stopped annoying her thoroughly Americanized daughter. Growing up near Los Angeles, Annie was continually exasperated by both her mother's typical Korean harangues--you must get all As and attend Harvard--and non-so-typical eccentricities: stuffing the house with tacky Pope paraphernalia.

But when Annie's mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, the uneasy relationship between mother and daughter changes. Choi's witty and accessible prose will appeal to any daughter of immigrants, and to anyone who's had a challenging relationship with their mother.


Contributor Bio(s): Choi, Annie: -

Annie Choi was born and raised in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley. A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University, she lives in New York City.