This was a hard read that dealt with parental loss, racism and the loneliness than can come from immigrant families who don't speak of bad things or communicate with each other as much as members would like. A memorable memoir for sure.

Chinese Prodigal is a fascinating and well-written memoir in the form of arguments covering a wide range of important issues. Primarily, Shih focuses on Asian-American identity and the relationship between himself and his father. He covers a huge breadth of important topics within these themes and each essay is well structured and easy to follow. I really enjoyed this and found it a very educational red.

This memoir is a combination of the author's own personal experiences with being Asian-American as well as a discourse on the meaning of this identity in the United States. He expertly weaves in stories about growing up in a predominantly White community and the bigger picture those situations represent, bringing in meticulously researched facts and monumental events in history. Shih addresses important topics such as interracial marriage, the role of affirmative action in college acceptance and employment, and

His background in English is evident in his writing - his ability to write intellectually but still very accessibly. He is not afraid to talk about his own shortcomings, and he addresses many difficult topics that have impacted his interactions with his own family. Shih makes many astute points about the progression of Asian American identity in the US, but the text does tend to get bogged down by exposition. I wish the balance of the book leaned more toward memoir and intimate stories with a modicum of discussion about race relations.

In Chinese Prodigal, Shih weaves an amazing story across his essays with the threads of his life and race relations over time in the United States. We're given the opportunity to watch through the younger eyes of Shih with the knowledge of an older Shih, as he looks at his own past and is able to use his own hindsight to see how his life may have been more impacted by racism than he had thought of at the time, including delving into his own bouts with racism against himself.
The message from Chinese Prodigal may be clear, which is primarily that racism isn't always as clear cut as we may think of it, but the way in which he explores these ideas is exquisite and interesting. I found myself needing to learn more about how he and his family would relate to these situations as he would narrate different moments of history that would be occurring at the same time as his arrival at college or traveling with his father selling porcelain.
I not only learned a lot about the history of Asian Americans in America, but I also learned a lot about my own viewpoints into Asian American culture, especially as it relates to the model minority, causing me to reflect on my own interactions with Asian Americans over the years to see how they may have been impacted by our culture's standard discussions about these people from very disparate backgrounds that have often been seen as one singular culture.
Shih crafts his tale with precision, creating life lessons out of his own life, both, I'm assuming, for himself, as well as the reader.

Really interesting set of essays about topics like grief and losing the author's father, affirmative action, book bans, raising a mixed race son. I think the author had some really thoughtful ways of addressing these comments but also not shying away from frank observations. I haven't seen much about this book around, but definitely recommend this one and will recommend on my social media as well!

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for the ARC! As a first generation Asian immigrant, I've a lot to learn about the experience and identity challenges of the Asian American population. This book offers an impassioned portrait of that experience, and I learned so much. The nuance of relationships, dreams, values and sense of belonging are silently yet deliberately outlined. Great read.

When you read this book, make sure you have a pen and highlighter with you. There will be quotes you want to remember and comments that you will want to write about. He does a great job balancing deep academic thoughts with realistic personal stories. He also balances stories specific to immigrants as well as stories that everyone has experienced. There are things I learned as well as things I remembered from my life. My only tiny issue that at times the shifting back and forth wasn’t as smooth as I would have liked. Great book with something for everyone.

I like this book because it went into history. And how explained how his family came from Hong Kong? And l hard they had to work. I'm trying to work very hard to make the american dream. The author was really interesting because he talked history together with his experience and how he viewed things for the American eyes.. He was a very smart child, and he everybody thought he was gonna be an engineer, but he wasn't very happy with that, so he went into a writing are. But he pursued a writing career and how this made him really happy. He had a lot of experiences with this because his friends didn't really understand him, and he also talked about the black experience because it was like kind of parallel to each other.. He seemed to make a really good life for himself and got married and had children, and he looked at his father perspectively through the ages. I liked especially the scene where they all gathered for Thanksgiving. They did not understand what it meant to be at this holiday.. You just got up and left, but the americans wife just sat there and started chatting away with other people. The title was really interesting because it suggested. He was gonna be an engineer, but he chose another career in writing. He also talked about the house he bought in Wisconsin. And that was really interesting too. Because he was like the only like Asian Americans there. And he was trying There is a son in both cultures. Very great book

This book was a lot; a lot of history, a lot of thought provoking ideas, and a lot of little things that made me say me too. Overall I enjoyed this book, but perhaps because it’s an advanced copy, paragraphs tended to run overly long for me. At times, it felt a little too scholarly, but I’m glad I read this.

Chinese Prodigal is a memoir in a series of essays by David Shih, an Asian American literature professor at the University of Wisconsin. Shih recounts his childhood growing up in the Dallas suburb to immigrant parents from Hong Kong, and the formative years of his life making sense of his identity as an Asian American in the wake of Vincent Chin’s racially motivated murder.

"To be Asian in this country and learn about Vincent Chin was to find out that you were related to someone you’d never met before. Our kinship didn’t trace back to Asia, to any custom or language we might be assumed to share. It could be born here. What Vincent Chin and I had in common as Asian Americans was our vulnerability in America."

Every immigrant parent has their own way of shielding their children from their own fear of being an outsider. Shih’s father, Shih later learned only after his death, decided not to teach Shih and his sister Chinese because “[his father] hoped to spare him the same fear he had speaking English, to smash that fear…leaving not a single trace of the country in our syntax or idioms.”

A cultural and historical discussion of what it means to be Asian American, Shih’s memoir complicates the often binary discussion on race and racial identities. Along with his own exploration of his identity as a son and a father in a country that does not make enough space for people like him, Shih’s writing is reflective with a subtle heaviness and sadness to it. Reading his memoir has been a rare literary treat and has given me a lot to think about. He is a literature professor after all.

Thank you NetGalley and GroveAtlantic for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

As an Asian growing up in a small rural racist North American town I found this book very relatable and important. It's a powerful and valuable book that needs to be shared with others.

Thank you for providing me the opportunity to review “Chinese Prodigal” prior to publication. I am appreciative and leave my sincerity review voluntarily.

its a bit strange to be writing a review where there isn't a single other person's review to rely on, but i guess that means that all the thoughts im putting down are truly my own. it took me a while to wade through this book, but i definitely think it was well worth the read. stories about regular people are always more compelling to me in their reminders that everyone around me have complex lives that could fill a book with the stories they have, and this was no exception.

i felt this book had value to my learning in understanding the model minority myth in america and the way that Asian and Asian-American people fit in american society. i am not american, and could not be further from it, but in australia where I am there is a lesser version of this model minority existing. shih has a heavy literary perspective on this and his experience in teaching shines through in the book. at times it almost scolded readers who did not engage critically with other literature, including scolding himself for his own past in that same area, which created the strong inference that you as the reader needed to be engaging critically with him.

his discussion about his father was my favourite part of the novel. it was so interesting to read how much distance there was and wasn't at times, and how growing up in different countries and ultimately them having the same goal of making a better life for themselves and then their families played out in such different ways.

the only thing about the book that i didn't quite get was what the eight arguments were. i don't think this detracted from my enjoyment of the book, but i struggled to pick out a thesis statement or a question about what each chapter was specifically trying to answer. without the subheading in the title of the book though, i don't think i would have ever thought about trying to pick out arguments without that heading, but also i think maybe i was oversimplifying the broader points about what shih was trying to say.

nonetheless, an interesting read and a compelling debut, simply about the way that racism has infiltrated every level and life in america and how in my opinion everyday people have the strongest perspectives on this era of history.

Entering into Shih's memoir, one cannot help but be drawn in by the immediate preface of the novel: his absence at his father's deathbed. This tantalizing hook, combined with a tactful utilization of exploring and analyzing the presence of racism in the core structure of the United States to this day, provides a wonderfully educating and analytical experience. The novel provides room for the reader to rethink their own actions and thoughts as they hear Shih's stories, whether that be his personal anecdotes from the perspective of a Chinese-American, or whether that be his connection to his racial identity in the States. I found myself completely invested throughout, finishing this book even more rapidly than I had ever anticipated. This read is absolutely a choice to be considered for any individual who is willing to take on their own biases and comprehend what it means to live in the United States, outside of the perspective of whiteness. I truly believe that Shih's commentary about what it means to be a Chinese-American is what was the most enrapturing part of the book, as I had never heard such a modern viewpoint about the concept before, and am always fascinated to hear different perspectives. All in all, this memoir can open your eyes while keeping you within an arm's reach of familiarity through the clever interwoven anecdotes about young life, family, and situational experiences.