Review
When I glanced at the cover of
Everything Asian,
which features a grinning adolescent Asian boy about
to devour a huge hamburger, I envisioned a book
about twelve-year-old David Kim's culture clashes as
a newly arrived Korean immigrant in the United States. I was right; the book is filled with Korean practices
juxtaposed against experiences in this country. But
it is a book overflowing with so much more than
that, too. Sung J. Woo writes not only from
David's perspective, but also from the standpoint of
the many characters David knows from the Peddlers
Town mall, the microcosm of America where the Kim
family's gift shop is located.
Holding an MFA degree from New York University, Woo
has published many of his essays and short stories
in...
Beyond the Book
100 Years of Korean Immigration
In 2008 there were more than 1.3 million people of
Korean ancestry living in the United States, making
Koreans the fourth largest group of Asian Americans,
after Asian Indians, Chinese and Filipinos. As of
2000, roughly one-third of Korean Americans had been
born in the United States, one-third are U.S.
citizens born in Korea, and one-third are
non-citizens.
The first wave of Korean immigrants came to harvest
sugar on the Hawaiian Islands at the turn of the
twentieth century, long before Hawaii became the 50th state. These migrants were part of
a larger group of Asians who made the trans-Pacific
voyage to work in...
