Paper Daughter

Do not waste your time reading the rubbish that is the memoir Paper Daughter by M. Elaine Mar. First, most people should know that I think memoirs are shit to begin with.

Second: this memoir especially is SHIT. M. Elaine Mar, why the fuck do I want to listen to you complain to me for 292 fucking pages about how difficult your life has been because you are Chinese? Do you think I care? Do you think no one else has had it difficult? And moreover, did you ever stop to think that maybe your woes are not the fault of the United States, but the fault of your incredibly stupid parents as described in your shitty "book"?

Third: grow a pair of balls, M. Elaine Mar, and write fiction. Memoir writers are fiction writers without balls. Grow a pair and write a memorable, significant piece of fiction. Instead of telling the readers what the restaurant in your memoir represented, grow a pair of balls, write fiction, and make the restaurant symbolic of some bigger concept that you could have tackled through writing fiction, but instead pussy-footed around in your little, nice nice memoir.

Fourth: in case you didn't know, M. Elaine Mar, but Toni Morrison already did the "I'm a minority trying to live up to the white, blonde hair, blue eyes, Shirley Temple, American ideal" thing. It's called The Bluest Eye. Read it. It's a good novel.

Fifth: learn how to write. No reader enjoys whining, complaining, self-loathing. For example, on page 79, you write, "I was sick of being ugly and stupid and hated." Awww, sorry, M. Elaine Mar.

Sixth: on that same note, I don't know if you talk to other human beings about childhood, or if you thought it would be wise to do so before you decided to dedicate 292 pages to writing about childhood, but in case you didn't know, most people do in fact find childhood difficult. It's not just you! I was picked on too in elementary school. And middle school. It is nothing new, nothing special. Instead of telling the world for 292 pages about what it's like to be picked on as a kid, an experience that most people know about anyways, grow a set of balls and write something significant about childhood (ie, write fiction).

Seventh: your memoir explores nothing interesting or new. Every child has faced the issues you discuss in your memoir. To make these issues interesting and/or symbolic, you could have grown a pair of balls and written fiction, and created a piece of art that reaches out to the entire world, but no, instead you wrote a memoir, focusing only on yourself. Poor, poor you.

Ok I am done with my rant. That, people, is why I refuse to accept the memoir as a art form with any credibility.