Introducing a character as viscerally believable and unforgettable as any in fiction, The All-American is a triumph—full of energy, dark humor, suspense, and hard-won wisdom.
Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad’s disappearance; he can’t even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player.
So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the U.S. government to deport him to South Korea, he’s forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life. One mishap leads to another, and as an outsider, Bucky has to fall back on not just his raw physical strength, but resources of character and attitude he didn’t know he had. In an expat bar in Seoul, in the bleak barracks of his Korean military, on a remote island where an erratic sergeant fights a shadow-war with North Korean spies, and in the remote town where he seeks out his drunken, indebted biological father, Bucky has to assemble the building blocks of a new language and stubbornly rebuild himself from scratch. That means managing his ego, insecurities, sexual desires, family legacies, and allegiances in order to make it back home—wherever that might be—and determine who he is to himself, who he is to others, and what kind of man he wants to become.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad’s disappearance; he can’t even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player.
So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the U.S. government to deport him to South Korea, he’s forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life. One mishap leads to another, and as an outsider, Bucky has to fall back on not just his raw physical strength, but resources of character and attitude he didn’t know he had. In an expat bar in Seoul, in the bleak barracks of his Korean military, on a remote island where an erratic sergeant fights a shadow-war with North Korean spies, and in the remote town where he seeks out his drunken, indebted biological father, Bucky has to assemble the building blocks of a new language and stubbornly rebuild himself from scratch. That means managing his ego, insecurities, sexual desires, family legacies, and allegiances in order to make it back home—wherever that might be—and determine who he is to himself, who he is to others, and what kind of man he wants to become.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Only a novelist as gifted as Milan Jr could have transformed this nightmare tale of a world lost into profoundly moving meditation on nationhood, belonging and the possibility of rebirth ... with this incredible debut Milan has rocketed himself into the literary stratosphere." - Junot Díaz
"With lean, propulsive prose, Joe Milan, Jr. has created an unforgettable character in American fiction, Beyonghak 'Bucky' Yi, a 'stranded townie' whose gifts as a running back may just be able to change his life for the better. Part high-drama, part dark comedy of the absurd, The All American is as wonderfully entertaining as it is moving, and I simply could not put it down. I suspect that you won't be able to either." - Andre Dubus III
"The All-American is a potent, spellbinding novel about the meaning of family and the pull of home. A true and specific story of Asian American identity and adoption, football fantasies and immigration detention nightmares. Joe Milan Jr. is a writer with guts and talent." - Jean Chen Ho
"The All American is an irreverent, bold page-turner exploring what happens when inconvenient parts of your identity come searching for you. This self-assured, engrossing debut is one of those rare first novels that breathes new life into the journey toward self-revelation. Solid and endlessly rewarding." - Mat Johnson
"The All-American is a compulsively readable page turner that continues to surprise. The novel burns with major themes and issues central to America. At heart are the central questions: Who gets to be American, and what does it mean to belong to a country?" - Krys Lee
"A funny and heartbreaking novel that gets to the heart of our post-national world... revealing the human consequences of white altruism and cultural myopia." - Jess Row
"An explosively powerful, unpretentiously original, darkly comic novel about dreams fulfilled by the most unexpected, convoluted and crookedest path. In this universe, there are no model minorities, no redemptions, neither heroes nor villains, only those who strive against the odds of underprivilege. Milan's refreshingly different voice and narrative keeps you reading to the sweetly bitter and weirdly hopeful end." - Xu Xi
"With lean, propulsive prose, Joe Milan, Jr. has created an unforgettable character in American fiction, Beyonghak 'Bucky' Yi, a 'stranded townie' whose gifts as a running back may just be able to change his life for the better. Part high-drama, part dark comedy of the absurd, The All American is as wonderfully entertaining as it is moving, and I simply could not put it down. I suspect that you won't be able to either." - Andre Dubus III
"The All-American is a potent, spellbinding novel about the meaning of family and the pull of home. A true and specific story of Asian American identity and adoption, football fantasies and immigration detention nightmares. Joe Milan Jr. is a writer with guts and talent." - Jean Chen Ho
"The All American is an irreverent, bold page-turner exploring what happens when inconvenient parts of your identity come searching for you. This self-assured, engrossing debut is one of those rare first novels that breathes new life into the journey toward self-revelation. Solid and endlessly rewarding." - Mat Johnson
"The All-American is a compulsively readable page turner that continues to surprise. The novel burns with major themes and issues central to America. At heart are the central questions: Who gets to be American, and what does it mean to belong to a country?" - Krys Lee
"A funny and heartbreaking novel that gets to the heart of our post-national world... revealing the human consequences of white altruism and cultural myopia." - Jess Row
"An explosively powerful, unpretentiously original, darkly comic novel about dreams fulfilled by the most unexpected, convoluted and crookedest path. In this universe, there are no model minorities, no redemptions, neither heroes nor villains, only those who strive against the odds of underprivilege. Milan's refreshingly different voice and narrative keeps you reading to the sweetly bitter and weirdly hopeful end." - Xu Xi
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