When 17-year-old Bucky Yi is distributed from the USA to South Korea, leaving the one residence he is aware of, he should summon all of the pluck and perseverance he has gained as a highschool soccer participant to outlive in a spot that’s each his start nation and international to him.
Bucky has lived most of his life within the rural city of Tibicut, Washington, having moved there after his mom’s loss of life and his father’s remarriage to an American girl. After his father’s later abandonment, Bucky continued to dwell along with his stepmother, Sheryl, and have become decided to get a soccer scholarship so he may depart Tibicut, the place he’s certainly one of solely three Asian American college students at his college. However after getting concerned in certainly one of his Uncle Rick’s disruptive outbursts, Bucky is arrested and results in an immigration detention middle. Unable to supply official proof of his American citizenship, Bucky is deported to South Korea, the place he’s compelled to serve within the Korean military.
Korean American writer Joe Milan Jr. spins an immersive, fast-paced story in his debut novel, The All-American. Bucky is an intriguing and sympathetic character. He’s weak and powerful, uncooked and mature. He finds frequent floor between the divergent factors of his start and adopted international locations, akin to discovering a strategy to talk in Korean whereas drawing on his expertise as an American.
Milan’s writing is tight, with recent and vivid descriptions that illuminate the contrasts in Bucky’s background and cultural make-up. The novel raises questions on who and what precisely determines your identification. Is it your birthplace, or the place you’re raised? Is it your dad and mom or your identify or the papers you carry? Is it notion, both from your self or others?
Wealthy and engrossing, this coming-of-age story affords an intricate exploration of identification and transformation that will likely be particularly interesting to followers of Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, My Yr Overseas by Chang Rae Lee and China Boy by Gus Lee.
