Eat Everything Before You Die: A Chinaman in the Counterculture

By Jeffery Paul Chan

In this vibrant and original novel, Christopher Columbus Wong, orphan son of a Chinatown bachelor community, is trying to invent a family for himself while all around him American popular culture is reinventing itself with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Christopher finds himself on a wild journey with his gay older brother, Peter, a pan-Pacific TV chef; the defrocked, deranged, and eroding ex-director of a Chinatown settlement house, Reverend Ted Candlewick; the sharp-eyed, conspiring matriarch Auntie Mary, the bridge between the conflicting values that make up this cultural stew; and Uncle Lincoln, a bachelor, short order cook, and, quite possibly, Christopher and Peter's father. Further complicating Christopher's voyage are his ex-wives: Winnie, a Hong Kong immigrant looking for a green card, and Melba, an American orphan of the counterculture.

Set against the backdrop of America's wars in Asia and the assimilation of that experience--the refugees, the stereotypes, the food--Eat Everything Before You Die is an ironic commentary on the identities the children of Chinese American immigrants concoct from their questionable histories, cultural practices, and survival strategies.

Chan's riotous story will appeal to general readers, particularly those interested in the Asian American experience, and will be of strong, enduring interest to students and scholars in Asian American Studies.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0295984368
• ISBN13: 9780295984360
• Release Date: July 2004
• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Length: 297 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

The book is good, title is bad - "Chinaman" is a derogatory term

I enjoyed the book and support the author's work. But I want to make sure people who are just browsing do not mistaken the word Chinaman to be a general term like Englishman or Frenchman, of which the equivalent would be Chineseman, not the offensive Chinaman. Webster's defines "n-gger: a black person - usually taken to be offensive" and "Chinaman: Chinese - often taken to be offensive."

The Soup Tastes Great

Jeffrey Paul Chan's fictional tale of Chris Columbus--Chinese American everyman-- and his richly idiosyncratic extended family, endows an already fascinating cultural history with the tangible tastiness of sex, drugs and fermented red bean. My senses were so taken with the novel's swirls of fish paste and fresh sweat that I almost missed the striking syntactic nuggets of social comment (i.e. "the bamboo curtain") fried up by the author. One of my favorite things about the book is how much its structure mimics its central metaphor.  My relationship to the text, especially upon completion but also throughout, was the same I might have if presented with one of the fishy melanges described so beautifully within it. As I taste, I am not positive if I recognize cilantro or parsley -- is that a hint of ginger, even?  Rather, the flavors mingle in such a way as to blur my discrete understanding of each ingredient. Likewise, while I wouldn't trust my accuracy if asked to recreate a recipe from the Neon Moon to the commune, the soup tastes great.  Ultimately, I am thankful that I am not granted a clarity that Chris, the protagonist, himself doesn't have.  As the reader, I am offered the vicarious experience of displacement; I am dual, too; I am myself not always sure why I ended up West when I tried to go East.  And I don't think I'd want it any other way.