RaveThe Harvard CrimsonChang’s memoir Eat a Peach explores the dimensional growth, missteps, and triumphs of his experience as a Korean-American chef while interrogating the emotional burdens and moral ambiguities underpinning his dizzying rise to acclaim ... Chang elucidates the numerous personal struggles he navigated during adolescence and early adulthood. It is during these moments of internal turbulence that Chang’s incisive observational powers shine ... To characterize Eat a Peach simply as a memoir of trauma and tenacity, however, would be deeply remiss. The text’s greatest strength lies not in its abstractions but, rather, in its fastidious commitment to illuminating the minutiae ... The deeply felt, startling candor with which Chang recounts his myriad adversities lends a confessional intimacy that keeps the text’s self-help bent from collapsing into didacticism. His is a paean to embracing the dual forces of turbulence and transformation, one that readers would do well to remember as they navigate the challenges of their particular realities.
