4 out of 4 stars
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The author of Standing Out: A Cross-Cultural Journey of Self-Discovery, Angela Lee Chen, was born in New York to Chinese parents and lived most of her childhood and teenage years in Nairobi, Kenya. She begins her memoir with funny anecdotes of people asking her where she was from and how the answer was not so straightforward.
I like that the author gave her insights of where we are from, what we do, and our name, are only adjectives describing ourselves and not who we are. She quoted Professor Cheng: “You must find the One behind the adjectives.” (Page 19) This idea is a very profound concept to think about and to apply.
Chen shared a lot not only about herself but also about her dad, mom, and brothers. She wrote of their travels all over the world, climbing mountains, visiting famous sites, and experiencing lots of different situations. She gave a great description of her dad and mom. Her dad worked for the UN and her mom was a Chinese artist, who painted African themes and animals. Many times, her dad surprised me how he did not communicate much about where or what the family was going to do next. They just had to be ready! One of the biggest surprises was when and how Angela’s brothers, Darryl and Chris, came into their family.
Most of the stories were light-hearted and funny while others were a bit sad and shocking. If you enjoy reading memoirs and stories of cross-cultural experiences, you will like reading Standing Out. There are many interesting facts and tidbits one can pick up while reading this book. On the other hand, if you absolutely do not like memoirs and are looking for some kind of exciting fictional story, you may need to pass on this one.
Angela Chen wrote her memoir in the first person narrative style using the present tense to tell about her life experiences. I liked that this made the stories come alive and allowed the reader to feel like the event was happening now and being experienced together with the author. Though there was a timeline in the front of the book, I felt that skipping back and forth in time and not telling the story in chronological order, sometimes threw me off, as I was a bit lost. For example, Chen mentions Cliff, without introducing him as her husband, and then she threw in her ex-husband and later she told about Nick. I had to piece it together that she was married and divorced from Nick and later married Cliff. This was really the only thing that I did not like about the book because things were not clear a few times.
I enjoyed the descriptions of cultural experiences of food, language, bathrooms, and weddings in Asia, as Chen and her family traveled to China, Korea, and Japan. I loved the way she would describe things. She described a bathroom with “a reek that burns nose hairs off.” Her dad told her to blend in as a local while visiting China, but then while on the train, a Chinese man wanted to know what her Lunar age was and she had no idea!
I rate Standing Out by Angela Lee Chen 4 out of 4 stars. The book was extremely well written and other than one missing hyphen, I did not find any errors. The humorous and present tense style of the author sharing about her, at times, bizarre family and experiences all make it well worth receiving this rating and no lower.
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Standing Out
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