Free Food for Millionaires

Literally just completed, Free Food for Millionaires is going in my Top 5 easily.

Free Food talks about a group of first and second gen Korean-Americans in New York during the 90s. In the center of the group is Casey, who is stubborn, incredibly prideful, and creates her own path. She is also broke as a joke continuously because of her lack of budgeting skills even though she is a Princeton grad in economics. It reminds a lot of St Elmo’s Fire, where you follow a group of people post-grad from a well-known school and you become very intimate with their lives and the struggles they face with finding their way with the expensive pieces of paper that are supposed to validate your purpose in the world of employment.

I fuckin’ loved reading this, I am going to be real, just like this book was. You experience so many clashing sub-cultures, traditional family culture from South Korea versus the evolving American way in so many areas like sex, marriage, work, etc, it is no wonder the young characters struggle. Not to mention that there is the sub-culture of living the lifestyle of New York, which sounds completely awful. It is funny how growing up, I always talked about living in the city in a loft industrial apartment, and now I look at the complete opposite, that while reading Free Food it was sad to get this constant state of worry and heaviness of the weight everyone carried on their shoulders, just simply trying to live life and ignore that the weight is there.

I loved how real this world was, with the various kinds of the characters and their behavior; it sounds like a sociological observance, ha-ha. It was a relief to read how human they are, that they make big mistakes and live with consequences. I hate Ted, by the way. Team Ella, down with Ted.

I would definitely read this again, and I would totally be down to discuss this book with anyone. As we can tell, I got really invested in it. If you would to like to read Free Food for Millionaires, you can find it here.

10/10