The Fruit 'n Food

by Leonard Chang

Book Overview

When Thomas Pak is hired as a clerk at a Korean grocery, he isn't prepared for the searing racial tensions that threaten to destroy the neighborhood in which he lives and works. His tenuous... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0930773454
• ISBN13: 9780930773458
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Black Heron Press
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Chang's candid portrayal of a dark urban world

Enter Thomas Pak, isolated Korean-American set apart from the world by circumstance, by generational boundaries. He is an individual that becomes inextricably tied to the Fruit N' Food, a job that offers him human connections, as well as money, for a basic need: survival & life. However, the racial rage that envelops this mileu brings to it a certain sacrifice: racism begets racism in this world, and often brings down everyone within it. With a clear, meticulous literary voice, Chang describes this setting with a stylistic candor; bringing to the fore themes of the Asian "American-dream", race, hate and class struggle. Tom Pak is rendered through a Stranger-eque portrait with sometimes graphic observation, only for us to realize his lost role in a society that bewilders him even further.

in the heart of the heart of the tension

everyone's fighting the hell out of each other trying to get at that American Dream and it's not a pretty sight...crab cage with the claws out chopping and clamping and poor old Tom Pak is getting the crap beaten out of him...this is the closest i've seen to some writer getting at the screwed-up racial mess the cities are going through and i'm glad he wrote this...

I thought it really hit deeply

This is pretty hard-hitting stuff. But even so, I thought there WAS hope and redemption at the end, because even in the ruins, the characters knew what to do, where to go--what was next. There was forwardness in their vision. Mrs. Rhee even has that tough, I-will-kick-ass viewpoint at the end. I thought it was great.

A Scary Look at the "Melting Pot"

Chang's novel is the first Asian-American novel that I read that did not give in with the stereo-type of asians and blacks. Instead it is an intricate observation of people and the space they create for themselves. The space is manifested in many forms-race, generation, language and in this novel Chang put them all in a pot, then let human nature take it's course. The result is a frightening look at America.

An intense, harsh look at race relations.

I've never read anything like this before. This isn't the cliched Asian American fiction we see a lot these days. It's scary, violent, and apocalyptic