02 Jun / I Loves Yous Are for White People: A Memoir by Lac Su [in San Francisco Chronicle]
Lac Su is a survivor of things so harrowing that just recounting some of those experiences, even from the distance of a keyboard tapping out a review of his memoir, I Love Yous Are for White People, makes the heart wince.
As a 5-year-old immigrant to the United States – which his family calls “heaven” before their arrival to a filthy studio in a decaying Hollywood apartment building – Su has already survived his best friend’s death, whizzing bullets, inhumane conditions on a nightmarish boat escape from Vietnam, and temporary displacement in Hong Kong.
One of his first American memories is playing with a found balloon “for days on end in absolute bliss.” Having retrieved it from the building’s rancid carpet, he finds it impossible to inflate: “I can tell someone else has been blowing on my balloon because the inside is moist and tastes salty … but I bite, suck, and chew on it enough to remove the grime and restore its bright red luster.” When his father sees him with the cherished toy, he flies into a rage – but a 5-year-old has no comprehension that he’s been playing with a used condom.
“They can’t tell me it’s not a balloon,” Su insists. “Pa just doesn’t want me having fun in Heaven.” Caught with another “balloon,” Su experiences the brutality of his father’s anger: “It’s the first time Pa has taught me a lesson with his heavy hands. … It hurts worse than I ever imagined it would.”
Violence marks Su’s relationship with his father throughout this haunting memoir. “My world revolves around a tiny man,” Su repeats about his father, who stands less than 5 feet but thinks nothing of beating his wife and children into complete submission. Sick and often unemployed, Su’s father is determined that education will save his children from a life of welfare and food stamps. “You’re experiencing the one thing I’ve wanted my entire life – a free education,” he tells Su on the first day of school … [click here for more]
Review: San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 2009
Readers: Adult
Published: 2009
I must purchase this book. Amazing and gripping. Thanks for the excellent review.
Thanks so much for visiting my blog, too! Come back again soon.
Thank you, Terry, for reviewing my memoir, and connecting with it. I read your review, and the first thing that came to my mind after was, “Terry gets it!”–the way you took snippets from the book to concisely summarize the themes from the memoir. It’s a complicated story, such is life. The way you reviewed it was to the point. Doesn’t get any better than to have the San Francisco Chronicles help share my voice–the memoir.
Part II is in works. Don’t sleep, San Francisco!
-Lac
Oh, so glad you found me!
And DO keep me posted about Part II. Will be awaiting it with great curiosity, that’s for sure.
That “Terry gets it” just made me chuckle. Hope the book gets great audiences!
I just read the book and there are so many emotions and so many questions still lurking in my head. What a remarkable human being. I glad he is doing part II, I will be looking for it. I relate to Mr. Su in so many ways, mostly in his experience as an immigrant an outsider.