THE RICE ROOM: Growing Up Chinese-American--From Number...

THE RICE ROOM: Growing Up Chinese-American--From Number Two Son to Rock ‘n’ Roll by Ben Fong-Torres (Plume: $11.95; 260 pp.). A former editor at Rolling Stone and a radio broadcaster, Fong-Torres attempts to come to terms with the conflict between the traditional values of his Chinese parents and American pop culture. Like many first-generation children, the author learned only fragmentary Chinese; his immigrant parents never really learned English. As a professional communicator, he was frustrated by his inability to explain his love for a girl from a different ethnic background or to share his sorrow when his older brother was murdered. Fong-Torres is not the first writer to explore the tensions between first- and second-generation Americans, but his clean, readable style makes this memoir unusually engaging.