Press
Review: Kip Fulbeck's acclaimed fictional autobiography
Mandy Willingham, eurasionnation.com
July, 2002
In
his first full-length published work,
Paper Bullets: A Fictional Autobiography
(University of Washington Press 2001), award-winning Chinese-Caucasian
performer, artist, professor and author Kip Fulbeck explores the effects
of stereotypical depictions and perceptions of Asians, particularly those
perpetuated by the American media. Through a series of hilarious, aggressive
and poignant short stories, Fulbeck addresses such precarious topics as
Asian fetishizing, Asian male masculinity, interracial dating, and bicultural
families. He also expounds on a subject he knows best: Hapas. Throughout
Paper Bullets, Fulbeck considers issues regarding Hapa identity,
and the evolving role of Hapas within Asian and Caucasian culture.
As a whole, Paper Bullets is a raw and risky read. Fulbeck reveals
an engaging and delirious narrative, under the aptly sub-titled "fictional
autobiography" format. Through this, readers are privy to the development
of an unabashed protagonist created from Fulbeck's own truths, exaggerations,
and imagination. The result is a hybrid of fact and fiction, interweaving
myth, anecdote, pop culture references, and social musings.
Fulbeck's narrator is drawn in part from his own experiences growing
up in 1980s Southern California suburbia, raised by a Chinese mother and
Caucasian father. He portrays the dichotomy of the narrator's bicultural
childhood with contrasting, and humorous images. In one chapter, the narrator
describes weekend treks to Los Angeles Chinatown for dim sum and triads-seeking
adventures with his Chinese cousins (triads are Chinese mafia organizations).
This is later contrasted with amusing descriptions of his father's affinity
for slowly progressing steak dinners served with fine wine by buxom waitresses.
Fulbeck spares no expense in divulging the grittier details of his narrator's
past. His confessions are sources of contradiction: from the brutal elementary
school taunts inflicted by the narrator on the new "F.O.B."
(Fresh Off the Boat) transfer student, to the crushing experience of his
first love and subsequent loss at the hands of a nubile, 14-year old Brook
Shields look-alike. Continuing his tumultuous encounters with the opposite
sex, the narrator is portrayed alternating between dating and bedding
exclusively Caucasian, and then Asian women. In an ironic turn, he is
eventually ensnared by one Caucasian woman with a penchant for dating
and deceiving Hapa men.
At turns thoughtful, hilarious and incendiary, Paper Bullets
entrusts its reader with the kind of intimacies only sometimes revealed
on the pages of diaries, or whispered in the ears of those we love. Never
mind that Fulbeck's confessions vacillate between undetermined truths,
embellishments, and complete fiction. In the end, Paper Bullets
is storytelling that is rewarding and unrelenting.
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