Summary

In Prologue, named after “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” the narrator Phuc Tran resented the new kid Hoang Nguyen in eleventh grade because Phuc used to be the only Vietnamese student in his class at Carlisle Senior High School. In the 1980s, Phuc lived in Carlisle, Pennsylvania with his immigrant family. Most of the small town’s population was white. By high school, he had been bullied for his race many times and had figured out that the best way to fit in was to do well in school and blend in with the punk kids. He started working at the public library and found Clifton Fadiman’s The Lifetime Reading Plan. He thought that reading the books on this list would be the perfect way to help him assimilate with educated white men. He also started dressing punk and found a...