Allen Gee

I wish I could give it five stars. I feel like this book is the tip of the iceberg for forgiveness. I suffered mental abuse, financial loss, and damage of character from a boss that still affects me to this day. I have tried to forgive, but the things he did were deliberately done as revenge against me because when his mom was my boss, she was the same way. I was not liked for being truthful and doing my job. That is oversimplifying it, but when great people take their jobs seriously and tell the truth, then people who don't hold up their end discredit and lie to cause character damage, even mental and physical pain. Ironically, both the man and his mom had psychology degrees, and quite frankly knew how to use their knowledge to play mind games and destroy an innocent person's career and financial life. When you are in the field of teaching, all connections must be at least average, or you are not going to ever teach in a satisfying job that doesn't take advantage of you. This book would have helped me want to get to the level of wanting to forgive if I had read it back in 2016. I am past the point of wanting to see him suffer or get the consequences of his wrongdoing, because I do believe a loving God has felt my pain and any justice that I could dish out pales to what God can do. It does give me comfort that God does not like it when anyone hurts His children, so I feel like I don't need the man to say or do anything for me. But the problem is, sooner or later I have to go to sleep. And from time to time, disturbing dreams pop up that worry me enough to wake up. I am always trapped in a bad teaching job, or about to make a mistake that is going to get me in trouble. So, without having been diagnosed, I am pretty sure I am PTSD. This book does not address how to handle it when your body reacts when you don't want it to do so. And that is why I give it three stars. If you had called it STEP 1 in Healing, or something like that, it would have been five stars, but people who have had deeper pain and issues as a result of wrongdoing are not going to get any peace of mind. It might start the process, but that will be it. I did appreciate the religious references, and thought they tied in with the book, but I am afraid someone will read this and think that something is wrong with what they are doing because their bodies are betraying and hurting them. If you have ever had to be on the run constantly, knowing that no matter how much you did or how well you did it did not matter, because your boss was trying to watch for screw ups to document and get you in trouble, then you would understand that just saying a few words out loud or a few prayers is not enough. If you write a second book as a sequel to this one, please keep this in mind. Thank you!… (altro)

I took my first class in Asian-American history in high school and what I learned in that class fascinated me. I took an Asian-American literature class in college and did an independent study of it in graduate school. I read Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea, Carlos Bulosan's America Is In the Heart, John Okada's No-No-Boy, and many more. Although it has been many, many years since I studied any of this, I still gravitate to books that tackle the subject of being Asian-American so when I heard about Allen Gee's collection of essays, My Chinese-America, I was intrigued and curious to see how his writing expanded on the reading I did decades ago.

Gee's essays range from the intensely personal to his feelings about the way Chinese-American culture is perceived, from the way that the media presents Chinese-Americans to his nostalgia for all that is being lost in an increasingly homogenized culture, one catering to tourists. Each essay contains seeds of all of this in them, heightening their intensity and impact. He discusses his own heart condition and family history, playing basketball as a means to fit in, casual racism, and the Asian-American experience. His essays are personal and general, enlightening and, yes, sometimes angry. He confronts the strain of moving from a place where he was not alone to somewhere that his ethnicity not only made him an outsider but also resulted in frustrating and heartbreaking discrimination against his father. He addresses the myth of the passive (read: emasculated) Asian-American male and the perception of Asian-Americans in higher education, especially elite higher education. The essays either have their catalyst in something that occurred in his own life that made him reflect on how his ethnicity played into the event or in the media, and presumably the majority view of Asian-Americans as a generic whole, as is the case with his essay about a racist YouTube video and "Linsanity." Each essay in this short collection crystalizes his thinking further on what it means to Gee to be a Chinese-American man today and who he really is inside his own skin beneath the layers of cultural expectations and media portrayals. The essays are thoughtful in their presentation of one man's experience and they share valuable insight into the reality of an often ignored minority.… (altro)