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Monday, October 13, 2008

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'Happy Birthday or Whatever' by Annie Choi

Both side-splitting and sad, this memoir chronicles the turbulence of growing up Korean in California

By Melissa Silvestri
Published: April 15th, 2007 | 9:35am

Harper, $13.95, List Price: 256 pages

Annie Choi grew up in Los Angeles straddling two cultures: the '80s in San Fernando Valley and her family culture of Seoul, Korea. Her childhood was full of confusion and arguments with her mother--a fashionable Korean woman with strict sensibilities, a woman who would not let anyone sway her frame of mind, least of all her children. Choi's memoir is devoted to her mother's influence as a strong and unwavering individual, from ridding Choi's bedroom of excess stuffed animals to making her not only attend Korean school on Saturdays but write her spelling words 20 times each to insure A's and acceptance at Harvard.

Choi's memoir follows in the tradition of memoirs like Gabriella de Ferrari's Gringa Latina or Loung Ung's First They Killed My Father, bestsellers that introduced readers to cultures and countries they otherwise wouldn't know of or get the chance to visit. Choi illuminates Korea as a country the size of Indiana, where Choi's family members stop every hour along a trip to the Soraskan mountains to eat roadside treats and sing along to cheesy American pop tunes at karaoke clubs. Choi, being the American, has to prove her Korean-ness by speaking Korean as well as she can, as a shining example of her mother's rearing and proving that "even though I wasn't completely fluent in the language, I was fluent in the culture." Still, she fails at a traditional bowing to her grandmother, her grandmother's eyes "stabbing me right through the heart," and has to explain her vegetarianism over and over again, receiving the response, "But you eat fish, right? That's not meat!"

Once again, Choi's mother is the most memorable character of the book. She may speak in broken English, but she is hilarious and bitchy and unwavering and warm in her own tough way. Despite being raised a Buddhist, she and her husband convert to Catholicism and she buys a large portrait of the Pope to hang in the foyer and collects Catholic tchotchkes to decorate the home. She takes pride in her breast cancer by announcing how thin she is and how cancer is the best diet. While watching Titanic, she refers to Leonardo DiCaprio as "Leo DeCrap" and "Big Head," and is stupefied by why people would be fighting while a ship is sinking, which should only take ten or fifteen minutes.

Annie Choi's memoir is a fantastically personal piece devoted to her mother's strength and idiosyncrasies, as well as her own struggle to form an identity apart from her close-knit Korean heritage.