Lac Su

"The striking title of the writer Lac Su’s memoir is “I Love Yous Are for White People,” which explores the emotional devastation wreaked on one Vietnamese family by its refugee experiences. I share some of Lac Su’s background, and it has been a lifelong effort to learn how to say, without awkwardness, “I love you.” I can do this for my son, and it is heartfelt, but it comes with an effort born of the self-consciousness I still feel when I say it to my father or brother." - Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2016 Pulitzer Prize Author for Fiction, Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Author of THE SYMPATHIZER: A NOVEL, RACE AND RESISTANCE, AND NOTHING EVER DIES. --- "For second-generation, American-born/raised folks like myself, author Lac Su totally nailed it: we first felt a collective wave of PTSD--Parental Trauma Stress Disorder--sweep over us as we recognized slivers from our childhood reflected . . . I won't regale you with stories from my own tiger mother issues but suffice to say, shards of those proscriptions hit home closer than I'd care to admit." - Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE, BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME, AND WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER --- "I Love Yous are for White People is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. A breath-taking journey about beauty and love." - Dave Pelzer, author of A CHILD CALLED IT and recipient of the National Jefferson award --- "The book debunks the seemingly positive myth of Asian Americans as a model minority, substantiates certain negative stereotypes of Asian men, and challenges some of the classic Asian values that apparently have shaped the Asian American identity. I argue that Su’s memoir is a critique of structural inequalities, urban poverty, unemployment, inaccessibility to a support network, and the intersection between class, gender, and race in the contexts of war and its aftermath." - Ha, Quan-Manh (2016) "Domestic Violence in Lac Su’s I Love Yous Are for White People: A Sociological Criticism Approach," Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies: Vol. 7, Article 9. --- "In I Love Yous are for White People, Lac Su has given us the ultimate in memoir. A remarkable story full of sweetness, pain, but most of all, hope." - Tish Cohen, author of TOWN HOUSE and INSIDE OUT GIRL. --- "I LOVE YOUS ARE FOR WHITE PEOPLE by Lac Su is that rare combination of a miraculous yet true story that also happens to be masterfully written. The author's account of his family's nightmarish escape from Viet Nam, on foot, under heavy gunfire, and then by boat - told sparingly and unforgettably - sets the stage on which the rest of his story spools out with such a flow that you forget you are in the act of reading. Lac Su has told a brave story that is also a cautionary tale that should be read by many, showing us the way to how our youth - immigrant and otherwise - can come to know their true worth." - Mim Eichler Rivas, author of BEAUTIFUL JIM KEY, coauthor of FINDING FISH with Antwone Fisher and coauthor of THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS with Chris Gardner. --- “In I Love You Are for White People, author Lac Su offers a face—his face—as a window into the experiences of impoverished Asian refugees. Su recounts the formative events of his childhood and adolescence, all of which bear the theme of searching for love and community within the confines of racial identity and socioeconomic status. From an academic perspective, many facets of Su’s memoir are pregnant with social commentary but Su maintains focus on the humanistic aspects of his family’s stories . . . emboldening us with the initiative to create a more hospitable America.” - Leung, Chung (2014) “Book Review: I Love Yous Are for White People,” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences: Vol. 36, Article 2. Stanford University, CA, USA --- "Lac Su's extraordinary story of exile - from a country, a family, and ultimately from himself - is both a heart-wrenching and immensely entertaining read. Lac is a master storyteller. Each scene was like a Wes Anderson film - quirky, moving, surprising - and the more I read the more I fell in love with this vulnerable and hurting, but also resourceful and self-sustaining, boy." - Kerry Cohen, author of LOOSE GIRL: A Memoir of Promiscuity --- "The riveting opening sets the stage as the family raced to a rickety boat to escape their homeland, dodging communist gunfire as they ran. The son of war refugees, the author came of age in the poor enclaves of Los Angeles with an emotional burden familiar to children of immigrants. Su offers a compelling narrative of immigrant life, cultural dissonance and the tug of familial obligation..." - KIRKUS Reviews --- "In this moving first memoir, Su recounts his family's escape from a difficult life in Vietnam for another in Los Angeles. Much of the City of Angels is the polar opposite of shimmering Hollywood--Su encounters abject poverty and gang culture. After looking for love in all the wrong places, he eventually establishes an identity in his adopted country. Anyone who wonders what obstacles an immigrant must overcome will be fascinated by this assimilation story; Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior complements it nicely." - LIBRARY JOURNAL --- "Haunting, brutal . . . From molestation and abuse to gang banging and armed robbery, [Su] spares no detail in his memoir - and he doesn't regret sharing any of it." - San Diego UNION-TRIBUNE --- "Harrowing . . . a haunting memoir . . . with this debut, [Su is] ready for a much-deserved audience." - San Francisco CHRONICLE --- "In a recent memoir, Vietnamese American writer Lac Su directly addresses this topic, right in his book's title: I Love Yous Are for White People." - StuffWhitePeopleDo.com --- "This is a powerful book about immigrants finding the harsh realities of East L.A. instead of the American dream, and redoubling their efforts and getting it in the end." - VANITY FAIR --- "The best memoirs trace not only the writer's personal evolution, but also give the reader an insider's view into history. That's the case with Su's account of his family's escape from Vietnam and subsequent resettling in a gang-ridden pocket of Los Angeles. The dislocation cracks open Su's father's sense of his place in the world, and he takes his misery out on his tender-hearted son, who eventually turns to a gang for companionship. Heavy stuff, to be sure, but Su's delight in the telling detail -- whether it's the shiny 747 that whisks his family to their new life or his Vietnamese uncles' incredulity at not being able to take home stray California dogs for dinner pokes a few pinholes in the darkness." - Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE (Considered the book one of the best memoirs to read this summer) --- "With each transparent penstroke, Su offers audiences an inside look at his exchange of shameful ashes for the beauty of hope and a new tomorrow. Simply, I Love Yous Are for White People is a story of redemption." - NEWD Magazine --- "What I love most about I Love Yous is not necessarily the tale itself -- I have read my share of stories about new Asian immigrants in America. What really moves me is Lac's vivid, powerful recollection of his early life, told with sensitivity, fearlessness, and a knowing nod to anyone who's been there too." - Angry Asian Man of www.AngryAsianMan.com --- "I recommend this book. Highly." - bigWOWO of www.bigWOWO.com (Rated it: Asian American Gold) --- "Hands down, all biases aside, it was a great book. A must-read for anyone interested in the Southeast Asian American experience. I'm convinced I-Love-Yous are for White people." - Minority Militant of MinorityMilitant.blogspot.com --- "Plainly clear by now that I LOVE this book and have come to love the man who wrote it. I don't know what to tell you, except that you should totally check this book out." - Jee of 8Asians.com --- "I couldn't put [this] f..ker down. I'm already half way through this MF and I may have to finish it up tonight, and the way I read, lips wide open pronouncing every word - f... people - I'm not going to sleep tonight." - Slanty of SlantEyeForTheRoundEye.com --- "...what truly works about the book is that Su manages his narrative with neither self-pity nor self-aggrandizement. (That the memoir does not fairly drip with delusions of grandeur makes it, I have to say, unique in the slate of autobiographies by Vietnamese American men to date.) I liked the Lac I met in his pages. And it is a long-awaited treat finally to have a Vietnamese American memoir to recommend reading..." - Hyphen Magazine --- "Lac's story can be more accurately described as shock and awe - so shocking that it leaves the reader in awe about how something like this could happen to anyone." - Asia Pacific Arts Magazine --- "[The book] covered familiar territory with its thematic combination of filial piety, cultural identity, and urban gang violence. While I can understand the resistance towards these worn-out tropes, I think it's slightly shortsighted to consider this memoir solely as another entry into the slate of memoirs that deal with these tropes . . . perhaps there are geopolitical patterns and socioeconomic roadmaps in place that breed these heritages of violence . . . I think this topic of discussion is particularly relevant to today's international climate, considering the state of current U.S. foreign affairs . . ." - Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry "The Making of a Memoir" is a short documentary produced/directed by Steve Nguyen. Check it out here: http://vimeo.com/4994292