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Overview
Chan Kim has never felt like an outsider in his life. That is, not until his family moves from L.A. to a tiny town in Minnesota--Land of 10,000 Lakes--and probably 10,000 hicks,too. The Kims are the only Asian family in town, and when Chan and his twin sister, Young, attend high school, it's a blond-haired, blue-eyed whiteout.Chan throws himself into the only game in town--football--and the necessary roughness required to make a player. On the field it means "justifiable violence," but as Chan is about to discover, off the field it's a whole different ballgame . . .Chan Jung Kim has always been popular. But that was when he lived in L.A. and was the star of his soccer team. Now his family’s moved—to a tiny town in Minnesota, where football’s the name of the game and nobody has ever seen an Asian American family before. Desperate to fit in, Chan throws himself into the game—but he feels like an outsider. For the first time in his life, he finds himself thinking about what it really means to be Korean—and what is really important. By turns gripping, painful, funny, and illuminating, Necessary Roughness introduces a major new talent and a fresh young voice to the Harper list.
1998 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
1998 Best Books for Young Adults (ALA)
Sixteen-year-old Korean American Chan moves from Los Angeles to a small town in Minnesota, where he must cope not only with racism on the football team but also with the tensions in his relationship with his strict father.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Unwillingly transplanted from inner-city Los Angeles to tiny, all-white Iron City, Minn., Chan walks a thin line between the traditional Korean values of his stern Abogee (father) and contemporary middle American mores. His parents, for example, deride sports ("In Korea," says Abogee, "grown men would not waste their time fighting each other over a tiny ball"), but Chan becomes the kicker for the all-important high school football team. Lee, who has previously explored Korean American identity and small-town Minnesota settings in Finding My Voice and If It Hadn't Been for Yoon Jun, is less successful here. She fashions a number of subplots or incidents that are compelling on the surface-a racially motivated locker-room attack on Chan; a romance with a local girl; a tragedy involving Chan's twin sister; the road to the state football championships. But she compartmentalizes these developments: narrator Chan picks up and drops each concern before moving on to the next, with consequent damage to both the story's pacing and its credibility. In the matter of the locker-room attack, for example, it's hard to believe that the blindfolded Chan doesn't immediately guess who the chief culprit is; it's harder still to believe that two weeks go by before his attention returns to the attack. The choppy treatment is all the more disappointing given the many instances where Lee gets her characters' voices just right: they are proof that she can do better.Publishers Weekly -
An Asian American teenager finds himself an outsider when he moves from Los Angeles to an all-white Minnesota town and immerses himself in grueling high school football. Ages 12-up. Feb.The ALAN Review -
Moving from Los Angeles to a small town in northern Minnesota at the start of the twins' junior year in high school is a challenging experience for the Kim family. To the twins, Chan and his sister Young, everything seems different and making friends difficult. Chan takes his soccer skills to the football team, and Young plays her flute in the band. They make friends, yet Chan has to deal not only with necessary roughness on and off the field but also with family tragedy. In the process he ponders his Korean roots and family values. Adolescent readers will find the story moving, entertaining, and painful. They will gain some modest insight into an Asian-American family and see that, no matter the culture, there are more similarities than differences in relationships. Lee's storytelling is compelling.Children's Literature -
While high school is a time when most adolescents are at odds with their parents, for Chan and his twin sister, Young, it is most difficult. Trying to be true to the family's Korean roots, their father moves the family from L.A. to rural Minnesota to assist his brother. Everyone goes through a variety of upheavals and adaptations, at home, in school, in the clash of cultures within the community, numerous family conflicts, and personal tragedy. Lee deftly weaves a realistic portrayal of this Korean family's joys and sorrows, using a small Minnesota town and its high school football team as a backdrop. This book will appeal to both boys and girls with its realistic events, quick action and believable characters.Children's Literature -
Popular Chan has grown up in an Asian-American community and has all kinds of friends because of his soccer gifts. Moved to Minnesota, Chan faces a hostile world where nobody's ever seen an Asian-American family, or played soccer, or had to work in the family business. His twin sister seems the only one who understands when tension increases as he opposes his father's traditional Korean standards and the prejudice of members of his football team. This is an incredibly layered novel that manages to look at the complexities of coming of age, and moves along at a fast clip with moods that vary from funny to painful.School Library Journal
Gr 7-10Chan and his sister Young move from Los Angeles to a small town in Minnesota with their parents who immigrated to the U.S. from Korea when the twins were small. Entering their junior year of high school, the siblings face numerous obstacles. They are the only Asians in town, and the fact that their mother and father practice many of the old-world Korean customs that clash with Chan and Young's more Americanized desires is paramount. Chan, who tells the story, finds refuge on the high-school football team, his practicing and playing experiences making up a large part of the book. Both teens face bigotry and prejudice, but begin to adjust to the new school and town. They confide in one another and try to figure out how to deal with their rigid father. When Young is killed in a car accident, Chan is shocked, as readers will be. After an intense but very brief period of grief, he is able to move on with his life and even manages to become closer to his father. Lee's tight characterizations lift this novel above the ordinary, and the football action will appeal to sports' fans.Tom S. Hurlburt, La Crosse Public Library, WIKirkus Reviews
Football is the central metaphor for how a Korean family confronts life, death, and assimilation in this gritty and moving novel by Lee (Saying Goodbye, 1994, etc.).Leaving behind a successful grocery store in Los Angeles, the Kims move to Minnesota to rescue the store owned by the father's no-good, drug-dealing brother, Bong. Readers will identify the laconic and pained narrator, Chan, and his twin sister, Young, as different from each other as their former city's cultural diversity is from the relative homogeneity of their new small town. The family encounters prejudice from hostile provincials, as well as a welcome from their open-hearted landlady, Mrs. Knutson. Lee creates a tangible sense of what it means to work hard: The Kims struggle to make their new store succeed, going without furniture and embracing Minnesota hotdish. Tragedy comes when Young is killed in a car accident; reeling from the loss, Chan confronts the xenophobic bullies on the football team and reaches an understanding with his old-world father. Both points could have been reached without the death of Young, which seems a forced, unnecessary, and easy plot development. Lee's talent for dramatically depicting the pain and tragedy in living, for showing that every day is a battle, is subordinated by the facile scenes surrounding Young's death. Yet even if the lessons are not as precisely realized as those in Lee's previous books, this is still a strong and intelligent novel.