Book Review of The All-American by Joe Milan Jr.

 

Name of Book: The All-American

Author: Joe Milano Jr. 

ISBN: 978-1-324-03565-7

Publisher: W.W. Norton 

Type of book: South Korean, Asian DACA, army, Washington, 2000, football, secrets, absurdist events, Man's fiction, identity, teamwork, spying, doing the right thing 

Year it was published: 2023 

Summary:

Introducing a character as viscerally believable and unforgettable as any in fiction, The All-American is a triumph―full of energy, dark humor, suspense, and hard-won wisdom. Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad’s disappearance; he can’t even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the U.S. government to deport him to South Korea, he’s forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life. One mishap leads to another, and as an outsider, Bucky has to fall back on not just his raw physical strength, but resources of character and attitude he didn’t know he had. In an expat bar in Seoul, in the bleak barracks of his Korean military, on a remote island where an erratic sergeant fights a shadow-war with North Korean spies, and in the remote town where he seeks out his drunken, indebted biological father, Bucky has to assemble the building blocks of a new language and stubbornly rebuild himself from scratch. That means managing his ego, insecurities, sexual desires, family legacies, and allegiances in order to make it back home―wherever that might be―and determine who he is to himself, who he is to others, and what kind of man he wants to become.

Characters:

Main character is Beyonghak "Bucky" Yi, an eighteen/nineteen (depends on lunar  or solar system) year old man who only longs to get out of Tibicut on a football scholarship. Bucky is best described as angry and someone who doesn't take academics or knowledge very seriously. He is loyal but at the same time he refuses to see the bigger picture and seems to only see branches instead of trees. There are quite a few other characters, but I feel as if they weren't fleshed out as Bucky was. They seemed to have only one or two roles in the novel and beyond that nothing much is shown about them. 

Theme:

The main lessons would be either the tug and pull of identities versus teamwork and help. 

Plot:

The story is told in first person narrative from Bucky's point of view. Bucky lives in rural Washington, in a town of Tibicut, and the only ambition and love that Bucky has is moving away to a town with better opportunities. However, in what seems to be a consequence of almost absurdist events, Bucky is deported back to South Korea where he starts to work in an expat bar and eventually is forced to serve in military. The USA part for me is the most interesting and fascinating part of the story because Bucky isn't a stereotypical Asian male that one encounters, for better or worse. Having said that, while I appreciated the look at South Korea that I hadn't really seen, I am curious about why Bucky wasn't given a choice to serve as part of the army that serves with USA soldiers? (I was told there was ROKA which is South Korean army, and KATUSA which is when you have South Koreans serving with USA troops...also, there are certain exceptions for escaping the army. In the past one of these is only son of an only son, or there are also administrative roles if someone isn't fit, or health exception too. Also when I learned about South Korea was in early 2000s and novel takes place in 2000). 

Author Information:
(From goodreads)

Joe Milan Jr. is a Korean American author of the upcoming novel The All-American (W.W. Norton, 2023), and was the 2019-20 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In addition, he was a Barrick Graduate Fellow and BMI Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. His work has appeared in wonderful places like The Rumpus, Broad Street, F(r)iction, The Kyoto Journal, and others. He is now an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Waldorf University in Iowa. You can read more of his work at joemilanjr.com

Opinion:

First of all, I'm definitely the wrong audience for the novel, sorry to say so. I wasn't a big fan of the writing style, nor of the anger that seemed to permeate each and every page. Typically I love and enjoy novels that take place in Asia, in particular South Korea being a favorite of mine. I've read plenty of translated South Korean novels as well as plenty of Korean-American writers, and I was very excited for this novel. However its difficult for me to pierce the character's anger to understand the message that was given and to find sentences and words that will truly cause a life transformation. While I appreciated how different the novel is from my regular reads, it wasn't for me. I also would like to dub the novel as a yang to my favorite novel of all time, The Foreign Student by Susan Choi. 

This was given for review

3 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)