Bookish: Lac Su And I Love Yous Are For White People

Wednesday, August 12, 2009



I got sent out some mail from author Lac Su on his memoir "I Love Yous Are For White People" which has been getting some great reception since it came out and wanted to post up on the book just in case you haven't already read it (and yes, it's going on my list of books to read as well).

Summary

As a young child, I was dragged through a harrowing escape from Communist Vietnam. With a price on my father’s head in our home country, my family was forced to immigrate to the only place we were provided—seedy West Los Angeles circa 1979. Our high hopes for an American Dream were efficiently squashed by squalid living conditions and a cultural fabric that refused to thread us in. My search for love and acceptance amidst poverty and psychological turmoil, created by a harsh and unrelenting father, turned my young life into a comedy of errors, and, ultimately, led me to a dangerous gang experience that threatened to tear my life apart.

At the heart of this stirring memoir is the complicated relationship between me and my harsh, exacting father, whose desperation to provide for his family—but to make us as tough-skinned as he is—informs my entire existence.

Destined to be one of the year’s most eye-opening memoirs, I LOVE YOUS ARE FOR WHITE PEOPLE, is my account of finding a life of comfort and understanding while constantly made to feel like an outsider from every angle.
What Other People Have Said

"I Love Yous are for White People is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. A breath-taking journey about beauty and love."

- Dave Pelzer, author of A CHILD CALLED IT and recipient of the National Jefferson Award.

"Lac Su's extraordinary story of exile - from a country, a family, and ultimately from himself - is both a heart-wrenching and immensely entertaining read. Lac is a master storyteller. Each scene was like a Wes Anderson film - quirky, moving, surprising - and the more I read the more I fell in love with this vulnerable and hurting, but also resourceful and self-sustaining, boy."

- Kerry Cohen, author of LOOSE GIRL: A Memoir of Promiscuity

"In I Love Yous are for White People, Lac Su has given us the ultimate in memoir. A remarkable story full of sweetness, pain, but most of all, hope."

- Tish Cohen, author of TOWN HOUSE and INSIDE OUT GIRL.

“Haunting, brutal . . . From molestation and abuse to gang banging and armed robbery, [Su] spares no detail in his memoir – and he doesn't regret sharing any of it.”

–San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE

“Harrowing . . . a haunting memoir . . . with this debut, [Su is] ready for a much-deserved audience.”

-San Francisco CHRONICLE

"This is a powerful book about immigrants finding the harsh realities of East L.A. instead of the American dream, and redoubling their efforts and getting it in the end."

Alex Shoumataff, VANITY FAIR

"With each transparent penstroke, Su offers audiences an inside look at his exchange of shameful ashes for the beauty of hope and a new tomorrow. Simply, I Love Yous Are for White People is a story of redemption."

-NEWD Magazine