Ira Sukrungruang Archives - Richard GilbertRichard Gilbert

Q&A: Ira Sukrungruang

January 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

The writer discusses craft & his memoir Talk Thai. Following my review of Talk Thai: Adventures of Buddhist Boy, I emailed some questions to its author. Ira Sukrungruang responded with uncommonly helpful answers. He’s only thirty-four, but maybe that’s why: he’s been writing seriously since he was a senior in college and is still close enough to what he’s learned, his big breakthroughs, to help illuminate writing’s craft. Here are my questions and his answers: Q: On your blog you …

[Read More]

Review: ‘Talk Thai’ memoir

January 9, 2011 | One Comment

Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy by Ira Sukrungruang. University of Missouri Press, 169 pages People have two desires that, however fervent, are contradictory. They want to stand out, and they want to fit in. I think memoirs of overt dual identity appeal because they crystallize this universal dilemma. Growing up in the 1980s in the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn, Ira Sukrungruang was not only Asian but obese. He had that Hebrew first name—his parents had picked it …

[Read More]

Richard's books

The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead

by David Shields

I loved this inquiry and lament about human mortality, a stealth memoir in which we learn about the author indirectly, mostly in relation to his vibrant, dominating 97-year-old father.

Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster

by Jon Krakauer

For some reason not as engaging to me as Into the Wild but a great account; his spare style failed to help me see the mountain, but by the end I felt its cold. I am troubled by the human costs of the sport, as is Krakauer, who seems perm...

House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home

by Mark Richard

A fascinating experiment in point of view: it opens with an overview in distancing third-person; then it becomes a story told in differently distancing second person. His childhood and child self are fascinating. For me, he did not full...

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals

by Hal Herzog

As a dog owner, an “animal lover,” and a former farmer, I largely enjoyed Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat. Author Hal Herzog’s message is simple and clear: humans’ relationship with animals is illogical and emotional. My bona fid...

Fierce Attachments: A Memoir

by Vivian Gornick

Gornick’s truths blaze off the page, her portraits of others transfix, her sentences and rhythms delight. What she remembers, she says, of growing up in a Jewish tenement in the Bronx, is a building full of women: "Shrewd, volatile, u...

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
						1
2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31