A “fierce, comic” (New York Times) modern classic that follows a Chinese American chef navigating the uneasy terrain between cultural history and personal reinvention.
Sterling Lung grew up in the back of his parents’ laundry, speaking Chinese to his mother, English to his friends, and very little to the father he always seems to disappoint.
Now twenty-six and a graduate of Swarthmore and the Culinary Institute of America, Lung cooks French food for WASPs at a private club, all while observing and attempting to reinvent himself in real time in a world where identity is both inheritance and performance.
David Wong Louie skewers both the immigrant dream and the American appetite for transformation, exposing the absurdities, longings, and contradictions that shape identity in a globalized age. By turns biting and unexpectedly tender, The Barbarians Are Coming is a fearless exploration of assimilation, ambition, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive, precise in its comedy and alive to the fragile negotiations that make a life.
