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Letters To You And All Your Friends (2013)

by Annie Choi(Favorite Author)

3.55 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Touchstone

review 1: And I thought I had issues from my family!! OMG! Way too funny. First off, having grown up in NY with a racial mixed group of friends, Annie reminded me of Kim the one Korean girl in my group. Their families are the same! Right down to the underwear!Great book. Definitely worth a read. I laughed so hard with each page that I just couldn't put it down. I am going to have to read more of her work. Great writing.
review 2: Alyssa SutherlandShut up, You’re Welcome by Annie ChoiSimon and SchusterNew York, NY. July 2013Uninterested but Faintly Entertained by Her SurroundingsShut up, You’re Welcome isn’t written in the traditional sense. Annie Choi attempts a new twist on comedy writing by writing a letter to a person/place/thing complaining about the s... moretrife it causes her, and then follows each letter up with a story about her family that is somewhat connected. Her first letter is a roast on musical theater, and she then goes into great detail on her father’s undying love for musical theater, giving the reader a sense of what her father is like. This gives the impression that her father will have many quirks about him that are interesting to read about, however the rest of the book stands to testify this claim.Her second letter, “Dear Virgin America”, is hysterical and then followed up with a lengthy tale of a conversation she had with her mother about underwear. Choi writes a letter complaining about camping only to delve into a story about a family road trip. She maintains this style in a refreshing way although mainly relies on exaggerating personal stories. She has many letters that lead into stories about her parents, and doesn't ever really go into much detail about her older brother but he co-stars in many of the scenes in her life. Annie’s tone and overall outlook on life contrast starkly to her family’s traditional Korean values. Mainly, she is constantly pestered by everyone in her family to have a child and get married to a doctor or lawyer. Annie sees this as an annoyance but her sense of humor allows her to take things like this lightly. Although she is surrounded by ignorance, like her father gold-plating everything in their entire house, she takes comfort in being intelligent and aware that her parents are silly. She loves them a lot despite how frustrating they are. Her mother is mostly ignorant and her father is way too precise in every aspect of his life, her brother comes off as a heartless slob.Unfortunately, towards the end of her book she starts to get sentimental and reminiscent of her youth which makes her entire cynical outlook slightly less heartless and believable. She throws in this story about getting mugged and the book is basically getting dragged along now, propelled by her intention of assigning some fond nostalgia to her book. I’ve never read a book like this before, but I would’ve enjoyed it more if she had only written multiple letters making fun of things versus having letters and quirky stories about her traditional, frankly quite boring, family life. It is kind of sweet of her to talk about how much she loves her family, but not very funny, as the genre “Comedy” led me to believe her book would be. Shut up, You’re Welcome starts off strong with the witty, sarcastic tone of Annie Choi tearing apart numerous things she finds dumb. This is entertaining and comical but she doesn’t maintain it throughout the book. Her family stories are cute and mildly funny but are obviously fabricated because, who remembers exact conversations they had as a child with their parents? And the conversations are the entirety of the humorous aspect of her family stories, which are still insubstantial, but even less impressive when the reader is aware that Annie is just making it up to tie her book together. She slowly gets more and more nostalgic when retelling tales about her Korean parents, making at least 50% of her book subpar. Her jokes are funny and her tone is refreshing but the plot is weak. less

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