Join the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts as author Joe Milan reads from his debut novel, The All-American, this Thursday, September 14 at 7 PM in the Art + Design building at Austin Peay State University.
In a reverse of the American immigrant novel, The All-American follows Bucky, a Korean American high school senior whose real name no one can pronounce. Never knowing his mother and abandoned by his father, Bucky grows up in a rural Washington trailer park dreaming of playing college football. However, his football dreams are snuffed out as the U.S. government deports him and the South Korean government conscripts him. With this, Bucky confronts the fact that how he sees himself is not how others see him.
Joe Milan Jr. is a second-generation Korean American and taught in South Korea for nine years. An assistant professor of creative writing at Waldorf University, he lives in Forest City, Iowa.