Summary
School Library Journal:
Gr 7 Up– Home- what does it mean to Asian-American adolescents growing up in a country that often regards them as aliens? This intriguing collection of short stories presents answers as individual as each writer’s voice–answers that transcend the color of skin, hair, and eyes–and speak to the human heart. The search for identity sometimes leads back to Asian roots: in one selection, an adoptee journeys to her native Korea to find her biological parents. For others, the battle takes place on the home front. In the darkly funny, surreal, and painful “Knuckles,” a Chinese-American girl stubbornly refuses to eat her mother’s ethnic cooking. (You don’t need to be Chinese to understand the issues of control and self-destruction depicted here.) Immigrants from Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines tell their stories as well, and each selection is firmly anchored in a particular time and place. This collection surpasses Laurence Yep’s American Dragons (HarperCollins, 1993) in the uniformly excellent quality of its writing, the acuteness of characterization, and the sophistication of its themes. American Eyes crackles and burns, warms and illuminates.–Margaret A. Chang, North Adams State College, MA
Awards:
- YALSA Best Books for Young Adults: 1996