A Tender Age—Chang-Rae Lee

A Tender Age certainly stirs up memories–some tender and some raw–for Korean American Jeon-Gi.  His tenth year was quite difficult as he struggled on the cusp of lost innocence and responsibility to fit in with his multi-hued American peers while trying to imagine what he would become.  This is a beautifully  written faux memoir that will transport the reader back into a time of lost dreams, fears, awkwardness, and curiosity (prurient and otherwise) that we all experienced, but with the added dimension of being a member of a newly-arrived immigrant family.  The racially diverse inhabitants of Jeon-Gi’s tenement neighborhood remind us of the melting pot that once made America great.