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YELL-Oh Girls! Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American

YELL-Oh Girls! Emerging Voices Explore Culture, Identity, and Growing Up Asian American

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $9.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Rich Girl Rage
Review: The back cover warns the reader of what's inside with a picture of the author wearing an "I love me" tee shirt. There are many good anthologies of literature on the Asian American experience. This is not one of them.

Some of the contributors give good sincere accounts of what it is like to grow up as an Asian American female in the United States. Unfortunately, many others are infected with the politically correct racism against whites and males that they learned in the expensive universities their parents paid for them to attend.

I especially love the account by a half black, half Asian American who feels understandibly upset at rejection by both groups. It's an easy call to figure out that the ethnic separatist attitudes promoted by books like this just might lead to rejection of others. Unfortunately, she "learns" in Feminimism for Boneheads at her university that somehow racist white America is responsible. OK.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thoughtful, personal, complex and LONG overdue.
Review: This book does a lot to restore my faith in the publishing industry, which often seems more concerned with profit and packaging than substance, vision or good writing. Although I am a contributor to the anthology, when I first received editor Vickie Nam's call-for-submission emails a year and a half ago, I was skeptical. I was interested in issues facing Asian American women and girls, but I doubted that publishing giant HarperCollins was capable of producing a thoughtful, sophisticated book about deeply personal, complex and diverse experiences.

But despite my fears, the book is wonderful, and I wish it had been written ages ago! This anthology of personal writings by Asian American girls and women is the first of its kind, and it sets a high standard for any future work that wishes to treat Asian American girls' issues. The 80-some essays, letters, stories and poems included in it are thoughtful, eye-opening, moving, honest, strongly-voiced and well-edited.

Furthermore, the collection will dispel most myths that readers of any race or gender may hold about Asian American females. Both the girls and the older "mentor" women published here exhibit a great diversity of backgrounds, personalities, interests, accomplishments and views. They have done, felt and experienced so much, and they write with sincerity and eloquence about everything from kim chee to punk to anorexia to feminist theory. What the writers share is a determination to engage with issues of gender, race, ethnicity and culture, and to stand up for themselves in a society that punishes difference. Vickie Nam's careful editing and organization, along with her thoughtful, personable chapter introductions, give coherence to an eclectic array of voices, but never stifles the natural energy of the pieces.

Like many writers' first books, this one seems to be a project of great personal importance to Vickie Nam, and it has the potential to change the way Asian American girls read. Finally, a heartfelt, complex work that portrays Asian American girls as more than just token minor characters or damaging stereotypes! This book is what was missing from all of our childhoods, but it is a great gift to future generations of Asian American girls.

Yell-Oh Girls will undoubtedly appeal most to Asian American teenage girls. However, young men and non-Asian Americans will surely see themselves in this collection as well, since we have all been on our own journeys toward self-acceptance and, as the book jacket says, "lived to yell about it."

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No No No
Review: This book is bad for your health...the red cross is watching....BEWARE!!!!!

from,

IT >:o

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: No No No
Review: This book is bad for your health...the red cross is watching....BEWARE!!!!!

from,

IT >:o

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: fantastic read for young girls
Review: this book would be nothing short of a treasure for a young asian american girl searching for her identity through stories written by people who share similiar experiences.

while the succession of entries, may at times, seem a bit repetitive, overall the content is bold and inspiring.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Limited audience, lack of depth mar interesting collection
Review: This is a sweet collection of short anecdotal stories and poetry by mostly high school or college-aged Asian American females. The book is organized thematically, with subtitles like 'Family ties,' under which we find a variety of short stories written by girls/women of a variety of Asian ethnicities (though pieces authored by Korean Americans seem disproportionately large in number) who claim a variety of U.S. regional affiliations. The idea behind the book seems to be to prove or justify the internal diversity of a demographic popularly called 'Asian American females' - their races, personalities, interests, thoughts - and works as a response to the monolithic view of Asian American women offered by mass media. Whether or not it was intended, the book is unfortunately geared towards a very small audience; not only is it made to appeal to an Asian American female-specific readership that assumes a sort of unofficial sisterhood among females of Asian ancestry, its stories also tend to feature themes that are too high on light anecdotes and too low on fodder for intelligent thought and discussion. That is, most stories seem juvenile: limited to proving the authors' superficial individuality with a review of their outward lives and the problems they face as individuals solidly affiliated with two (or more) cultures but unable to pledge allegiance to any one. The stories in this book - while they number quite a few - are unable to provide detail to the identity crises mentioned or described in passing - details which will provide a deeper, richer, more complete, and more intelligent view of these spirited young countributors by answering basic questions such as 'Who am I?' 'Why am I?' and 'Why do I think so?' We in America have been content for far too long with vague statements about 'appreciating my culture' or 'knowing my culture/who I am' from Americans whose ancestors do not hail from Western Europe. It is time now for young Asian Americans (and other census-defined demographics) to more intelligently claim their individuality by closely examining exactly who they are and why. It is not enough to say that one 'understands what it means to be [Asian]' because has taken a short vacation to Asian nation X after graduating from high school. One must more thoroughly examine oneself before endeavoring to claim that ability to understand so complex a subject - a thorough examination not found in Yell-Oh Girls.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Book transcends genders and racial boundaries
Review: To regard Nam's book as a long awaited outlet for Asian American women is to give it partial credit. The book is more about fresh voices and dialects (try Hawaiian pidgin for instance) of youth and women who've turned to poetry and prose as their refuge. The golden thread in the anthology weaves over racial/gender boundaries and outlines the yearning to find one's individuality and to feel comfortable in one's own skin. Last time I checked, men strive for this, too. Women just have more sense in sharing about it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: writings from the heart of asian girls!
Review: Well, I was not going to write a review, except seeing one of the recent posts really bothered me. I liked Yell-oh Girls because it was a carefully done book that gave all different types of girls a chance to get heard. The comment from the reader from NY makes judges the girls unfairly. He is punishing them when they should be recognized and made to feel proud for being smart, talented and following their goals.

Also, I have never seen these kinds of discussions happening out there in the real world, so they are not cliche to me. This book is close to the issues I deal with on a daily basis. I respect girls for speaking out which isn't easy. I hope this wont be the last book and that more will come out in the future!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: great!!!
Review: When i first started reading Yell-oh girls, it was kind of boreing and i didn't think i would like it. What drew me to it was the reveiw ont he back of the book. Eventually after i got through the first few pages, i found the book to be really interesting and informative. I thought the author did a great job putting this book together, with all the stories she added into it. I really enjoyed all of them. I never knew what these young girls had to go through. Being called a foreigner everywhere you go,and being stuck between two countries and not knowing which to choose. It must have been really hard!! overall, i thought this book was great!!! :)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mandy's review of Yell-Oh Girls!
Review: YELL-Oh Girls! is a phenomenal book with fascinating stories, essays and poems. As an Asian American girl, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and the amazing writings in it. I feel that YELL-Oh Girls! will help many Asian American girls to realize that being Asian is a beautiful thing to treasure always.


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