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There are currently 24 member reviews
for The All-American
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Gaye R. (Coupeville, WA)
A Challenging Read
Reading this book was a challenge for me. The book's core subject regarding our country's treatment of immigrants and refugees-especially children-is something that I want to learn more about. I even like football and understood the references made in the book. It was Bucky's male teenage angst and sexual references and exploits where I was unable to relate. Also many of his experiences in Korea seemed unrealistic while at the same time the ending was too simple.
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Stephen, the-freelance-editor
A good story told with lots of words
My favorite line from the book appears in Chapter 53 and is made in reference to the Korean military, who "don't believe in mistakes. But every pencil has an eraser." In a set of circumstances, some caused by the main character's anger and errors in judgment and others created through sets of random (often absurd) situations, "Bucky" is ordered to serve his mandatory year in the Korean military. The problems with that being,
(a) he has lived in the United States (Washington state) his entire life not having been in Korea since early childhood and never having learned the culture or language, and
(b) he doesn't believe he is a Korean citizen due to being brought to the US by his father, who paid an American girlfriend to "raise him in a better place" and then returned to Korea.
For me, the best parts of this book are the references to outdated immigration policies and layers of bureaucracies that even the family's lawyers cannot defend against and Bucky's first-hand accounts of being stuck in limbo between the two countries—not really a citizen of either but claimed by an entity that really only counts him as a duty-bound body.
I wish those parts of Bucky's story could have been told against a different backdrop, but the author uses analogies with and comparisons to American football to make many points and justify others. He also uses often-ludicrous, ill-fitting experiences in the Korean military to demonstrate roadblocks to Bucky's American return.
I do feel that the author did a good job of tying up an excess of loose ends by the book's end, and I felt that the main character's resolution was realistic—especially when set against his journey!
I would recommend this book for more advanced YA readers and, especially, for readers looking to filter through a long story in order to find a better understanding of the personal costs of immigration on children as well as the difficult positions that undocumented youth—particularly children of undocumented parents, or DACA Dreamers—who have never lived in their parents' homeland are forced to face.
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Rebecca
Not for me
This book started out very slow for me. I’m not a fan of football and I found Bucky’s family to be incredibly unlikeable. I was hoping things would get better. Unfortunately, for me, not so much. I just could not connect with Bucky. I felt really sorry for his circumstances but it was difficult to get past the football references, the teenage hormones, the rage and the bad decisions. I almost stopped reading in the last section because it was just so odd, and, my gosh, there isn’t one appealing character in the entire book.
I don’t usually give gender labels to books but there is such a thing as Women’s fiction so I suppose this book would qualify as Men’s fiction so perhaps I’m judging unfairly. I would actually be interested to hear from a man that had read it. I give the book 2 stars for two reasons: I actually liked the ending, and the book also opened my eyes to how immigrants who have been deported may be treated. Some cash and see you later feels like a very broken system.
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