Like all autobiographers, Paulsen is anxious to describe what his life has felt like rather than to record a thorough, accurate chronology. He aims to give readers what the British author Samuel Johnson called "a map of his mind." Paulsen avoids lengthy descriptions of background information—for example he never names the street he lived on in Chicago or the boat on which he traveled across the Pacific—because a child simply accepts many things as givens in life. He does recall, however, vivid images that haunt the imagination: the grimy face of the drunk who assaulted him in a Chicago alley, a mother desperately trying to save her baby from the sharks, the lizard infested ceiling of their house in the Philippines. He also uses metaphors and similes to describe the emotional impact that events, scenes, or words had upon him.

Eastern Sun...