Customer Comments

This is the amazing, startling, and at times horrifying story of the author's childhood and young adulthood in Africa. Her family was not affluent and lived with uncomfortable, and often unbearable, situations. The political violence, harsh environment, and tragic losses influenced this loving family for good as well as for bad. Despite the hardships, there are beautiful descriptions of this country that the family loved and could not leave. The author writes her story with humor as well as vividly describing the many interesting, sad, terrifying, and endearing experiences which the family lived through together. I didn't want the book to end. I felt as though I was, in some way, distantly related to this eccentric, dysfunctional, but fascinating family.

Having lived a comfortable, middle-class life, with no catastrophic events to wipe out my finances, I found this book concerning homelessness to be enlightening, concerning, disheartening, but also inspirational. It made me eager to do more for those in my immediate community who have not been as lucky and blessed as have I and my family.

Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I was nevertheless ignorant concerning the incarceration of the Japanese-Americans in our area during World War 2. Throw in the Chinese culture, along with the Caucasian majority, and this historical novel is one which you won't soon forget. It's an endearing story which, as the title indicates, is sometimes wonderfully humorous and sweet.... and at other times very sad and bitter.