Yellow: Stories

Rating:
Summary: Excellent stories of cultural identity & diversity
Review: Don Lee is very subtle, yet his characters are rich in diversity and their points of view. I enjoyed the stories, the possibilties, and the awareness of their particular environments. Whether the characters are poets, golf pros, or master craftsman, they all embrace their uniqueness without bitterness and with the natural grace of generosity.

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Summary: I've finally decided to write a review...
Review: I am proud to choose this book for my first Amazon review. No plot summaries or style examinations here...

I picked up this book out a box that my sister was going to bring to Goodwill. I was automatically turned off by the bland cover and book title. Being a well-tanned light brown, I have never thought of myself as yellow, and I often cringe when I hear someone referring to someone else or even himself, as being "yellow."

I didn't plan on reading it, so I posted the book for sale on Amazon. To my surprise, it sold right away. I decided to get a taste of Don Lee's writing style while I still had the book, so I chose ONE of the shorter stories to read before I went to bed (about 3 AM at the time). Well, I finally went to bed FOUR short stories later around 5:30 AM. Needless to say, I finished the book the next day and was very impressed.

But I still don't like the title of the book. In my mind, it is too racially biased/based, almost implying the "for us, by us" attitude. After all, great fiction is great fiction, regardless of race. Don Lee is not a great Asian-American writer, he is a great writer, PERIOD.

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Summary: Don Lee tells his stories in Yellow
Review: I did not realize that "Yellow" is the color in English representing a race to which I may belong until I read Don Lee's book "Yellow". The reason is ostensible: I had scarcely heard anybody in the US identifying Asian Mongolia race as "yellow" in comparison with the White Americans and Black Americans, although, historically, Asian Mongolia race probably was named as yellow.

When I was sitting at Cafeteria chatting with the Whites, I found many Caucasians had skin darkener than mine, whilst some Africans had skin lighter than mine. Except the shape of the nose, lips, eyes that were perceptually different between these three races, I can hardly see a "yellow" color anywhere. Is it that I am color-blind?

Don Lee published his book with the title "Yellow", disclosing his pride, confidence, self-esteem and courage. Set in the fictional California town of Rosarita Bay, Don Lee presented a fresh, contemporary vision of what it means to be Asians in America, a post-immigrant examination of identity, race, and love. In this sophisticated and provocative collection, Yellow Americans, including Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese Americans flirt across and within racial lines, and end up facing both fears of being ethnically "yellow" and the universal terrors of disillusionment and abandonment.

Yellow is a collection of three stories. In a wide range of moods from the hilarious to the poignant or the sublime, three stories exhibited a group of unforgettable "yellow" characters like romantic Annie Yung, who had been forever longing for a cowboy; big- surfer Duncan Roh, who tried to transcend his reputation as a womanizer; the two mix-blood Patrick and Brian Fenny, who was deserted by his father; ex-fisherman Alan Fujitani, marooned in romantic widowerhood; and the "Oriental Hair Poets" Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, engaged in a battle of wits for the attention of Dean Kaneshiro, whose hand-crafted chairs are museum pieces; and manager Danny Kim, who was depicted as one successfully, from a disastrous childhood, ascended into Boston society as management consultant. Beside its kaleidoscopic and, many a time, romanticized portrayal of Asian Americans and their diversified stories, there is one perceptive and discernible theme that is prevalent in Don Lee's stories, which is love and sex, and life as a whole, of course. I read many stories written by Asian writers. But Don Lee's writing about love and sex was very straightforward and more American than Asian. It is to my memory, maybe it is too "ancient", that our writers would like to employ euphemism, metaphor, and more patience to portray scenes and settings so that a suspense or omission would trigger imaginations in the reader about anything that may occur between man and woman. However, Don Lee's description and story telling was unambiguous and unequivocal.

Don Lee has great talent to tell stories. His descriptions, whether about a person, a thing and a plot, were well written, carefully chosen, minutely exposed and exquisitely arranged. We may see one of his depictions here:

"Marcella Ahn's eyes lighted, and the whitewash of her foundation and powder was suddenly broken by the mischievous curl of her lips, which were painted a deep claret, "You mean you want to examine ... my buttocks?"

"He could feel sweat popping on his forehead. 'Please.'"

"Still smirking, she raised her arms; the ruffled cuffs of her blouse dropping away, followed by the jangling release of two dozen silver bracelets on each wrist. There were silver rings on nearly every digit, too, and with her exquisitely lacquered fingers, she slowly gathered her hair---straight and lambent and hanging to mid-thigh --- and raked it over one shoulder so it lay over her breast. Then she pivoted on her toe, turned around, and daintily lifted the tail of her blouse to expose her butt." Don Lee is also good at using dialogue to display characters' personality and intentions. In his story The Price of Egg in China, Don Lee wrote such a dialogue for one man artist and an aggressive woman client:

"Can I visit your studio?" she asked. "No, you cannot." "Ah, you see, you can dish it ---" "It would be very inconvenient." "For twenty minutes." "Please don't," he said. "Seriously, I can't swing by for a couple of minutes?" "No."

Marcella Ahn let out a dismissive puff. "Artists," she said. This dialogue fully displayed the woman's personality, which was persistent and aggressive.

As an Asian American, Don Lee could not escape from writing about issues of Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In the story "Yellow", he presented the comments --- of course it is not a political speech, otherwise it could run into the trap of racial discrimination --- showed his interests in observing Asian Americans from his Korean perspective:

"Yet oddly, it was the Asians themselves, the Sansei and yonsei so sensitive about assimilating, who would most readily ask Danny what he was. Their curiosity had nothing to do with an instilled caste system, the Japanese thinking the Koreans crude, the Koreans believing the Japanese heartless, the Chines caught somewhere in between."

Don Lee is a third-generation Korean American. As the son of a career State Department office, he spent the majority of his childhood in Tokyo and Seoul. Don Lee's stories appeared in GQ, New England Review, American Short Fiction, and Glimmer Train. Don Lee's Yellow is a wonderful book. As Charles Baxter wrote about the book:

"Don Lee's stories are expertly written and wonderfully readable, with a fascinating mixture of the comic and sorrowful. They are concerned with love, attachments and separations within Asian-American families, and, as the book's title suggests, they always touch on issues of racism and courage."

Rating:
Summary: Eight-Legged Perfection
Review: I don't think I've ever encountered a collection of stories where every single story fulfilled me so thoroughly. There are eight gems in Yellow, seven decent-sized stories and one long one, the titular tale that may be the most accomplished of the lot. That story chronicles the life of Danny Kim, who is doing exactly what FDR told everyone not to: fearing fear itself. The fear in Danny's life is racism, and he's never actually hurt by it in any grand fashion, probably because he heads it off (or at least thinks he heads it off). His character is fascinating and yet very believable: he's the kind of guy who, at the prospect of getting knifed by an assailant, might take out his own knife and slice himself before any damage could be incurred by the other party. "Yellow" is the longest story in the book and the most satisfying.

I found "The Price of Eggs in China" to be the most fun story, full of lovely twists and great detail about the making of furniture. "Casual Water" was the most heartbreaking, a sad story about two boys abandoned by both parents. Really, there isn't a weak story in this entire book. It's unfortunate that Yellow probably won't get past the typical Asian-American reader, because this book is quite universal in many respects, much like Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies.

Oh well. Maybe not every Joe and Jane Doe will read it, but here's one reader who's a much happier person for having read this wonderful collection.

Rating:
Summary: Creative look at modern race issues
Review: I initially bought this book for an Asian friend of mine, but I ended up reading it myself first, and found that I really got a lot out of Don Lee's book. The author has written a handful of fictional short stories, all of which take place in the fictional town of Rosarita Bay, located south of San Francisco, apparently near San Luis Obispo. With each of the main characters (a furniture craftsman, an attorney, a doctor, and a young man/college student), we learn about how race has impacted their lives. For some, they have eagerly identified with their Asian heritage. Others rejected it. We see how racial events impacted their personalities, and how their race impacts their day-to-day lives. I thought this was a fascinating book, although I was not immediately captivated by the stories. For me, the last story had the deepest impact, probably because the character's life is most similar to my own, apart from race.

Rating:
Summary: captivating and episodic
Review: Lee's collection of short stories is written in the style of Dubliners, where all of the stories take place the same town and the same characters pop up in several different stories. This method of writing makes for a fantastic read, as you are able to become more familiar with certain characters than a normal short story collection would allow for. In sum, a wonderful debut and I hope to read more of Mr. Lee's work very soon!

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Summary: A great reading
Review: This book is so I like to read but it is the first collection of short stories that I have finished. Normally I like to read novels. The reason why I read this book is because I like the second book from the same author (The country of origin). I am not an experienced reviewer. I can't tell whether it is pedestrian or literally meaningful. However, I like it very much. It is so enthralling in spite of the subtle writing style that I could barely put the book down. Once I have started one story, I had to continue reading till I had read the whole story.
My favorite stories are "Casual Water", about two young boys struggling to make a living after abandoned by their parents; and "Yellow", about a successful Korean consultant's internal struggle with his indentity and the cultural differences. For me, they are very moving and insightful.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: This collection of short stories is written about Asian Americans, but is not *for* only Asians. I think anyone of any race can identify with the issues these characters go through. Lee touches on race, but the majority of these stories deal with basic human emotions--jealousy, insecurity, lonliness. Don Lee's writing is subtle, but certainly not boring. He speaks quietly at you, and then there is a sudden moment of clarity that makes your heart ache. It reminds me of James Joyce's "The Dubliners." Do yourself a favor and savor each of these stories. The first and the last are my favorites.