Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters
Choi's volatile relationship with her domineering, chronically  dissatisfied mother is at the heart of this memoir, a funny and often moving  account of growing up in a family of Korean immigrants. The parent/child  compact in Choi's childhood home was as follows: Mommy and Daddy's job is to  take care of the child; the child's job is to study hard, go to Harvard and  become a doctor. But Choi and her mother face each other across a seemingly  unbridgeable divide: Annie has little desire to embody traditional Korean  feminine virtues (and no desire to be a doctor); her mother&mdash;to whom social  status is everything&mdash;cannot countenance her daughter's "shortcomings."  Whether recounting the shame of bringing home a B-plus on a fourth-grade  spelling test (a clear indicator that she's destined for an inferior  institution) or the greater horror of having to wear Korean clothes to American  school ("The fun of soup bring Spring" reads one pair of her tracksuit  bottoms), Choi adds acid wit&mdash;mixed with compassion&mdash;to her descriptions of  immigrant life in the San Fernando Valley. This is that rare book that delivers  more than it promises; Choi tackles the theme of mother/daughter conflict with  grace and humor.(Apr.)Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.