Bucky Yi is The All-American of Joe Milan, Jr.’s novel. He is living in a small town, Tibicut, in the Pacific Northwest. He dreams of being a college football player. He lives with his “Mom,” Sheryl, who had dated his bio-dad but is not his actual mother and who is often drunk. She is engaged to a man with whom she is planning her next phases of life. Bobby is his “brother” who is not his actual brother.
The small town community lets Bucky know that he is an outsider. He is not accepted by the girls he’s attracted to, except that a fellow Korean American named Chantal notices him enough to give him the finger now and again.
There is a “model minority” stereotype at play:
Everyone says I’ll be a doctor or a lawyer, but they haven’t seen my grades. Uncle Rick has seen my grades. And he’s seen me play. That’s why he wants me to play football.
Football turns out to be a fitting metaphor for many of the adventures Bucky faces and many of the strategies he comes up with to solve his problems. When a football recruiter comes to town, Bucky cannot get him to spare a moment. He observes bitterly of his fellow high school mates that their futures are not particularly bright either:
A townie future of grub-like children they’d lie to about the time they won 56-0. Jobs they’ll never like if they’re lucky, speed teeth and drunk tanks if they’re not. That is the Tibicut way. Everyone looking out their living room windows and seeing all the paint fading on their walls and the moss eating to their lawns and they wheeze, ‘Oh well,’ before lumbering off to the kitchen to zap some Stars and Flags fish sticks during the commercial break.
Bucky acts before he thinks. When he scuffles with his Uncle Rick, who is suicidal, Bucky comes to the attention of the police in Washington State… and is found to not have his citizenship papers straight. He is promptly deported to South Korea, his birth country, where he does not have a word of Korean in his brain.
This repatriation opens whole new worlds for Bucky. He finds a job at a local bar. He learns how to navigate the bureaucracy of the country. He works with a lawyer stateside who directs his actions to try to get the documentation to show that a mistake has been made and to get this teenager stateside.
Abroad, he is also an outsider, and he picks up on cultural differences between South Koreans and Americans… and those of other nationalities he meets. He sensitizes to the racist jokes told around him. One of the people at the bar suggests that “…other countries should be able to vote in American elections so they wouldn’t elect so many stupid and evil leaders that affect their countries too.” He goes to quotes from coaches he’s admired as important life lessons.
He tries to find his bio-dad but notes: “Later, I learned that some sorry men do you the favor of disappearing.”
He is starting to question whether his country, the U.S., is all its cracked up to be:
Hours pass. I should think about getting home but all I can think about are trick plays. Fake punts. Fumblerooskis. Statue of liberty. All are about misdirection. Look over here, while the ball is really going over there.
The All-American reads as a coming-of-age book, a farce, a spy novel, and a social critique. Bucky turns out to have the pros and cons of being American. He can make his own fate to some degree. He can travel. But then, he is also a forever outsider in his pseudo-adoptive country. He is the butt of social negativity and ignorant hatreds.
The novelist Joe Milan, Jr. teaches at Waldorf University in Forest City, Iowa. He is a 2nd generation Korean American. He taught in South Korea for 9 years.
Shalin Hai-Jew has worked in higher education for many years. She has edited dozens of nonfiction educational books and authored a dozen with a number of publishers.
