I Love Yous are for White People: An Immigrant Tale of the Streets of L. A.

(Paperback)

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As a young child, Lac Su made a harrowing escape from the Communists in Vietnam. With a price on his father's head, Lac, with his family, was forced to immigrate in 1979 to seedy West Los Angeles where squalid living conditions and a cultural fabric that refused to thread them in effectively squashed their American Dream. Lac's search for love and acceptance amid povertynot to mention the psychological turmoil created by a harsh and unrelenting fatherturned his young life into a comedy of errors and led him to a dangerous gang experience that threatened to tear his life apart.

Heart-wrenching, irreverent, and ultimately uplifting, I Love Yous Are for White People is memoir at its most affecting, depicting the struggles that countless individuals have faced in their quest to belong and that even more have endured in pursuit of a father's fleeting affection.

Reviews

"Lac Su's extraordinary story of exile - from a country, a family, and ultimately from himself - is both a heart-wrenching and immensely entertaining read. Lac is a master storyteller, and each scene is like a Wes Anderson film - quirky, moving, surprising. The more I read, the more I fell in love with this vulnerable and hurting, but also resourceful and self-sustaining, boy." -- Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl

"I Love Yous are for White People is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. A breath-taking journey about beauty and love." -- Dave Pelzer, author of A Child Called It and recipient of the National Jefferson Award

"In I Love Yous Are for White People, Lac Su has given us the ultimate in memoir. A remarkable story full of sweetness, pain, but most of all, hope." -- Tish Cohen, author of Town House and Inside Out Girl

"The riveting opening sets the stage as the family raced to a rickety boat to escape their homeland, dodging communist gunfire as they ran . . . Su offers a compelling narrative of immigrant life, cultural dissonance and the tug of familial obligation." -- Kirkus Reviews

Moving. . . . Anyone who wonders what obstacles an immigrant must overcome will be fascinated by this assimilation story; Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior complements it nicely. -- Library Journal

"Haunting, brutal . . . From molestation and abuse to gang banging and armed robbery, [Su] spares no detail in his memoir - and he doesn't regret sharing any of it." -- San Diego Union-Tribune

Author Bio

Lac Su holds a bachelors degree in social psychology from the University of California-Irvine, as well as a masters degree and Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology. The director of strategic alliances for TalentSmart, a global think tank and management consulting firm, he lives in San Diego with his wife and young daughter.