Yellow: Stories
by Don Lee

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Book Reviews of Yellow: Stories

Book Review: Don Lee tells his stories in Yellow
Summary: 5 Stars

When I was sitting at Cafeteria chatting with the Whites, I found many Caucasians had skin darkener than mine, whilst some Africans had skin lighter than mine. Except the shape of the nose, lips, eyes that were perceptually different between these three races, I can hardly see a "yellow" color anywhere. Is it that I am color-blind?

Don Lee published his book with the title "Yellow", disclosing his pride, confidence, self-esteem and courage. Set in the fictional California town of Rosarita Bay, Don Lee presented a fresh, contemporary vision of what it means to be Asians in America, a post-immigrant examination of identity, race, and love. In this sophisticated and provocative collection, Yellow Americans, including Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese Americans flirt across and within racial lines, and end up facing both fears of being ethnically "yellow" and the universal terrors of disillusionment and abandonment.

Yellow is a collection of three stories. In a wide range of moods from the hilarious to the poignant or the sublime, three stories exhibited a group of unforgettable "yellow" characters like romantic Annie Yung, who had been forever longing for a cowboy; big- surfer Duncan Roh, who tried to transcend his reputation as a womanizer; the two mix-blood Patrick and Brian Fenny, who was deserted by his father; ex-fisherman Alan Fujitani, marooned in romantic widowerhood; and the "Oriental Hair Poets" Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, engaged in a battle of wits for the attention of Dean Kaneshiro, whose hand-crafted chairs are museum pieces; and manager Danny Kim, who was depicted as one successfully, from a disastrous childhood, ascended into Boston society as management consultant. Beside its kaleidoscopic and, many a time, romanticized portrayal of Asian Americans and their diversified stories, there is one perceptive and discernible theme that is prevalent in Don Lee's stories, which is love and sex, and life as a whole, of course. I read many stories written by Asian writers. But Don Lee's writing about love and sex was very straightforward and more American than Asian. It is to my memory, maybe it is too "ancient", that our writers would like to employ euphemism, metaphor, and more patience to portray scenes and settings so that a suspense or omission would trigger imaginations in the reader about anything that may occur between man and woman. However, Don Lee's description and story telling was unambiguous and unequivocal.

Don Lee has great talent to tell stories. His descriptions, whether about a person, a thing and a plot, were well written, carefully chosen, minutely exposed and exquisitely arranged. We may see one of his depictions here:

"Marcella Ahn's eyes lighted, and the whitewash of her foundation and powder was suddenly broken by the mischievous curl of her lips, which were painted a deep claret, "You mean you want to examine ... my buttocks?"

"He could feel sweat popping on his forehead. `Please.'"

"Still smirking, she raised her arms; the ruffled cuffs of her blouse dropping away, followed by the jangling release of two dozen silver bracelets on each wrist. There were silver rings on nearly every digit, too, and with her exquisitely lacquered fingers, she slowly gathered her hair---straight and lambent and hanging to mid-thigh --- and raked it over one shoulder so it lay over her breast. Then she pivoted on her toe, turned around, and daintily lifted the tail of her blouse to expose her butt." Don Lee is also good at using dialogue to display characters' personality and intentions. In his story The Price of Egg in China, Don Lee wrote such a dialogue for one man artist and an aggressive woman client:

"Can I visit your studio?" she asked. "No, you cannot." "Ah, you see, you can dish it ---" "It would be very inconvenient." "For twenty minutes." "Please don't," he said. "Seriously, I can't swing by for a couple of minutes?" "No."

Marcella Ahn let out a dismissive puff. "Artists," she said. This dialogue fully displayed the woman's personality, which was persistent and aggressive.

As an Asian American, Don Lee could not escape from writing about issues of Chinese, Japanese and Korean. In the story "Yellow", he presented the comments --- of course it is not a political speech, otherwise it could run into the trap of racial discrimination --- showed his interests in observing Asian Americans from his Korean perspective:

"Yet oddly, it was the Asians themselves, the Sansei and yonsei so sensitive about assimilating, who would most readily ask Danny what he was. Their curiosity had nothing to do with an instilled caste system, the Japanese thinking the Koreans crude, the Koreans believing the Japanese heartless, the Chines caught somewhere in between."

Don Lee is a third-generation Korean American. As the son of a career State Department office, he spent the majority of his childhood in Tokyo and Seoul. Don Lee's stories appeared in GQ, New England Review, American Short Fiction, and Glimmer Train. Don Lee's Yellow is a wonderful book. As Charles Baxter wrote about the book:

"Don Lee's stories are expertly written and wonderfully readable, with a fascinating mixture of the comic and sorrowful. They are concerned with love, attachments and separations within Asian-American families, and, as the book's title suggests, they always touch on issues of racism and courage."

Summary of Yellow: Stories

Warmly praised by Ann Beattie, Charles Baxter, Robert Boswell, and Stuart Dybek, these stories are evocative, slyly humorous, and novelistic in scope, featuring such memorable characters as Annie Yun, whose aching heart and passion for country music has her longing for a cowboy; ex-fisherman Alan Fujitani, marooned in romantic widowerhood; and the wildly competitive "Oriental Hair Poets", Marcella Ahn and Caroline Yip, in a battle of wits for the attention of Dean Kaneshiro, whose handcrafted chairs are museum pieces. The title novella, a finalist for a National Magazine Award, follows Danny Kim from his disastrous foray into boxing as a teenager to his ascent into Boston society as a management consultant -- his life both driven and poisoned by his paranoid fear of racism.

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• United States
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