Eddie Huang On Fresh Off the Boat, His Second Book, and Drinking Dom Perignon with Lao Tzu

Eddie Huang’s 2013 memoir Fresh Off the Boat inspired a TV show of the same name that debuted this month. The sitcom has drawn 6 million viewers each week, and six episodes into its first season, it’s being hailed as a big step forward for Asian Americans. But Huang, a 32-year-old hip hop-loving chef, restaurateur, media personality, and troublemaker-turned-tastemaker, isn’t a fan. He says the show doesn’t do justice to the book or to the Asian immigrant experience. I got to chat with Mr. Huang about the show, the book, the illest writers, basketball, and drinking with Lao Tzu.
GC: What would you say to people who watch Fresh Off the Boat but haven’t read Fresh Off the Boat?
EH: I would say, “Read the book.” But I wanna know what you think.
I think the show and the book are completely different. The book is much more cerebral, and there’s anger and pain in the book that’s just not in the show. You don’t get to see Eddie grow up and unpack the things that happen to him and realize that they are part of bigger, systemic, racial issues. All these sort of hapless incidents that occur in the show are kept at an entertaining level, whereas the book takes the time to show how institutionalized and marginalizing these attitudes are.
I want you to start the article by saying what you said. 
Uh. Ok.
Everyone asks me to talk about it and every time I express my feelings about the show, people are like, “Why are you so negative? It’s a great show and it’s great for Asian Americans.” I get on Facebook and people are like, “Shut up” and “You need to just let it happen,” and I’m like, “This is my LIFE.”  It’s so insane that people are saying this to me and writing to me on social media, “Get out of the way, we just want this show,” and I’m like, “But that’s my life, man.”
The show is just a Prozac children’s version of the book. The real life Eddie at eleven or twelve years old was a very confused and lost kid, and there was a lot of sadness.
Remember when Anne Frank wrote, “Despite everything, I still feel that people are good at heart”? Well, that’s how I felt. I always really liked people and I didn’t give up on them and kept believing in the human spirit. But I would try to figure things out when surrounded by a lot of shitty people in Orlando and I couldn’t understand the disconnect between the things people said about how America’s great, and the America that me and my family, and other immigrants like us, are trying to navigate.
The show doesn’t capture any of that. It’s very funny and it’s good that it’s out there but it’s not a complete reflection of Asian Americans. It’s very filtered, it’s flat, it’s not dynamic. It lacks the depth of the story or the characters of the book.
I did the show and I always do everything thinking I’m going to change the world. I was thinking, about the network and the industry, “We’re going to push you, we’re going to fight, and we’re going to change the world.” My agent, my attorney and my manager are the best because they are the ones who have to look at things realistically, and think “How is Eddie going to take on these producers and the network?”
We have the number three sitcom in America with Asian people in it. And nobody thought we could do it. But now there’s time to explore the nuances and arguments in our identity. This show is necessary, but it’s a flawed first step. It’s not the best, it’s the Panda Express. It only takes the parts of us that make sense for a TV show, and it only takes the parts that are entertaining.
I want to make sure the show is deeper. I hope the show is not taken as the Bible of what Asian people should be.
Moment of truth: is the book always better than the movie or TV show? 
When you do screenwriting, it’s really just an instruction manual to create a bigger work. It’s not the work. I’d much rather read the book and the finished product than the instruction manual. I think it’s inevitable that a book is better than a movie—unless the book is really shitty. Then a movie could make it better. But a movie is not going to make a good book better.

What are you reading these days? 
Bukowski. Ham on Rye and Women. And I’ve been reading Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises.
Which book do you recommend to everyone?
Junot Diaz’s The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He’s the greatest, just the best writer. I wrote my manuscript for Fresh off the Boat not knowing who Junot Diaz was and I did a bunch of footnotes in my writing. When I gave it to my editor, my editor said, “You really like Junot, huh?” and I said “Who is Junot?” My editor told me read him, so after the first draft of my book, I started reading Oscar Wao.
I read 100  pages. I put it down. I was like, “He’s in my fucking head and it’s too close to home.” I would not finish Oscar Wao until I finished my second book. The day after I delivered my book, literally, I went home and I finished Oscar Wao. I read his shit and I feel like Junot Diaz is the most powerful Jedi. I read Junot like Kobe watches Michael Jordan.
 And Bukowski, he’s another dude who had a tough upbringing, and I relate to that. That and the domestic violence and the fights and the problems at school.
Those dudes are the illest.
While you were writing Fresh Off the Boat, which books and authors did you refer to for inspiration?
When I’m writing, I don’t read.
How did you find your voice for your memoir? You mentioned a professor who picked on your writing and your grammar. I’m curious because a lot of people can’t change an aspect of their writing without feeling hindered in their voice. You don’t seem to have that issue.
I didn’t have proper grammar for a long time because we spoke Chinese at home. Growing up, it was all Chinese. Also, being into hip hop and basketball, there’s not much grammar in that.
I purposefully set out and made a conscious decision to write the book like we talk. It’s aggressive, poppy, raw and undefined. I really wanted to do that because I felt like kids like me, who talk like me, wanted to read a book that talks like that.

In my second book, I smoothed it out. Not like I sterilized it, but Book One used that very raw vernacular. But I don’t just want to be different to be different, I want to be better in my writing. I want to be different and better and do it to the best of my ability.
There are parts of my writing where I can create more negative space. I don’t need noise all the time. That’s why I read Bukowski. I like how he writes. It’s short, it’s quick, it’s fast and I really like that about it.
I’m long-winded and I do a lot of asides, very much like a Spike Lee movie. But I’ll watch a Hitchcock movie, like Rear Window, and you’re just watching silently and penetrating the story with just a camera. So I’m bringing different elements to my game.
It’s like basketball. I like the way I write, and I write in a very raw way, but I pick up new elements. Like Allen Iverson was taught how to play the “right”way by Larry Brown, but A.I. was still gonna do what A.I. wanted to do. But he picked up some moves and skills that rounded it out.
What’s your second memoir about? 
It’s a reverse migration. I’m going back to China. The first book was, this is how I felt in America. But who am I in China? It’s also a love story about when I was engaged, how I got engaged, and I’m not engaged now, so the book goes through those trials and tribulations.
At its core, my second book is about projection. What we project. What is identity, race and love at the end of the day? Are these definitions or projections?
When can we look forward to reading it? 
2016. I think on Chinese New Year.
You mention Asian men and sexuality in your first book, and how they always get the shaft. You don’t discuss it very much, though. Do you look at the issue of sexuality more in your second book?
There’s a lot of sex in the second book. In Fresh off the Boat, Ning is in the book. We’d broken up after six years, and I was writing it six months after we broke up, so I didn’t want to put her through reading about herself. The editor wanted it in, but he was a really cool about it when I said I didn’t. He said, “At the end of the day, do what you think is right. And if you want to protect her, do it.” So I didn’t want to put it out there. I felt like the book wasn’t about that.

You get to make food for one writer, dead or alive, that you admire. Who do you meet and what do you make for them?
Junot Diaz. Beef noodle soup.
Can I pick someone dead, too? Because if I could pick someone dead, I’d pick Lao Tzu, who wrote the Tao Te Ching. I don’t know if he’s a vegetarian or something, but I feel like for Lao Tzu, I would open up an incredible bottle of burgundy wine, or great champagne. Wine and champagne remind me of the Tao Te Ching in that it’s spiritual when you get a really good bottle. So yeah, Dom Perignon for Lao Tzu.
 Are you going to feed Lao Tzu at all?
Nah, we’re just gonna drink!