Girls for Breakfast
by David Yoo
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Book Summary Information
Author: David YooEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-05-24
ISBN: 0385731922
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Book Reviews of Girls for Breakfast
Book Review: Breakfast of Champions
Summary: 4 Stars
David Yoo's novel feels a little overextended: did he really have to begin the saga of Nick Park from all the way back in third grade? But in general he knows how to tell a story and capture the reader's attention right away. Nick doesn't have many Korean friends, and he's ashamed of the way his mother serves Korean kimchee with her cheeseburgers, ashamed of his dad's heavy accent. "Hey Mr Park," Mitch said. "Hello, Meech," my dad said. I flinched. Mitch and Paul laughed; they thought he was hilarious. His accent sounded more pronounced around my friends. Other Asian kids in the Korean church Nick sometimes attends call him a "banana," -- yellow on the outside, white on the inside. And yet Yoo makes Nick's struggles with his contested masculinity into a rewarding and heartwarming tale.
He's good at tennis, and that makes him a few friends. And he draws well, so he gets put in the poster club at high school--a wealthy suburb where some of his pals live in actual mansions: Paul's got an bowling alley in his basement. At the same time he is sometimes tolerated, but racist bullies make his life a hell, as when one know-nothing calls him "Long Duk Dong" after the comic exchange student from SIXTEEN CANDLES. Racial epithets fly all over the place in GIRLS FOR BREAKFAST, and there's no safe place for a boy like Nick. The girls he lusts after aren't all that interested in him, but there's always Miss January from an old issue of Playboy. She's been sitting in his closet for ten years or more, and whenever life gets tough for him, he hauls her out and starts spanking it. (In one amusing scene he looks up and finds the cat, Boris, has been watching him [...], so he pulls up his shorts and tries to distract Boris from this traumatic memory. Now, that's self-effacing!)
Apparently David Yoo had the great luck to be able to work with the late, great fiction writer Lucia Berlin, a lady who died way too soon and whose books (published by Black Sparrow and other midrange presses) are pretty much out of print, and who stands the risk of being forgotten. I think Lucia Berlin, one of the finest writers in recent memory, would have been proud of Woo her student; he shares something of her intense interest in humanity, her gifts of penetrating dialogue and concrete observation, and quite a lot of her big-hearted humor, the laugh that could warm one's bones. I expect that GIRLS FOR BREAKFAST, even with its occasional lapses in taste, and its infrequent longueurs, introduces us to a masterful voice.
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