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"A significant historical work that remains fascinating and fun" Jung traces about one hundred years of Chinese-American history in an excellent memoir that is inspiring yet told with a great underlying sense of humor.
Students of Chinese language and culture will find the Cantonese references and photos spread throughout to be fascinating easter eggs. For example, one of the more interesting, subtle things I noticed was the picture of a homework exercise from the author's mother's English composition book on p191 where various English words were "sounded out" using Chinese characters as a Cantonese phonetic basis which is precisely what someone learning such a different and unfamiliar writing system as the Latin alphabet would do.
Regardless of one's background with Chinese, fans of history will find this a fascinating, fun read that is hard to put down: I myself read it in one sitting. Jung bats a 1.000 with this one, bravo!

"This book makes me not only value and respect my parents, but also other immigrant parents ...
I appreciated this book, because it has given me a more deeper perspective in what it means to be a second generation Chinese American of emigrant parents who operated a Chinese laundry. I understand that all minorities that emigrated to the United States in search of a better life had their struggles with survival and discrimination, this book makes me not only value and respect my parents, but also other immigrant parents who desired their children to be prosperous.
Lou Lan W Argueta, Hawthorne, Ca."

Your book is a joy to read. It has a beautiful flow to it and an enriching quality... More > that is easier to feel than it is to describe. Couched in humor, it deals with the painful and serious matter of day-to-day struggles of existence of a couple who came here with hardly anything more than faith in their hearts and steel in their spines. Krishan Saxena, Kensington, California

Your book is the one that I had promised myself that I would write one day, but you went ahead and wrote it. You did a wonderful job!
Henry Tom, Frederick, Maryland

Thank you for telling your story in such an engaging manner. While your story is personal it is also universal because of its working class foundation laced with layers of Chinese ethnicity, family structure and dynamics, and the specificity of the South.
Flo Oy Wong, Artist, Sunnyvale, California

Enjoyed very much reading your family history revealing a unique experience yet sharing many of the same problems of families in Chinese laundries. Yours is one of the few written accounts of the many family-run laundries in the U. S. Thank you for the careful documentation of this history, which would be otherwise forgotten. Tunney Lee, Boston, Massachusetts

"Southern Fried Rice" is a well-written and factually documented memoir that gave me insight into the lives of Chinese in the South, especially those living where there were no other Chinese, as you did in Macon. Your move to San Francisco must have been as much of a cultural shock for you as it was for me, an African American moving to the Bay Area from Memphis. Leatha Ruppert, Cotati, California

"Riveting - couldn't put the book down until it was finished - it mirrored many of my own childhood experiences growing up in New Zealand in the 50s. The Chinese immigrant experience must have been the same the world over." Helen Wong, Auckland, New Zealand < Less