A review by onceuponatime
This Jade World by Ira Sukrungruang
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
This Jade World follows the author as he visits Thailand and his family a year after his divorce with his first wife, Katie. The chapters are short and polished, jumping from moment to moment, weaving the story of Ira through his life, with a focus especially on his mental state in the last year.
We see the effect his body, through race and fatness, had on him growing up as a Thai boy in America, and we see how much the relationship and divorce of his own parents affected him. We also see his fight with the idea of love and how he tackles with the fact he's similar to his father. We meet a lot of his family, getting to know more of how Ira became Ira, and inadvertently, Thailand as the author himself sees it.
I don't usually read biographies or memoirs, and I kept forgetting this isn't a work of fiction too. I enjoyed getting to know Ira's life through well crafted and poetic chapters, and seeing the catharsis he finally received.
We see the effect his body, through race and fatness, had on him growing up as a Thai boy in America, and we see how much the relationship and divorce of his own parents affected him. We also see his fight with the idea of love and how he tackles with the fact he's similar to his father. We meet a lot of his family, getting to know more of how Ira became Ira, and inadvertently, Thailand as the author himself sees it.
I don't usually read biographies or memoirs, and I kept forgetting this isn't a work of fiction too. I enjoyed getting to know Ira's life through well crafted and poetic chapters, and seeing the catharsis he finally received.