Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American From Number Two Son toRock 'N' Roll

by Ben Fong-Torres

A leading entertainment journalist offers a poignant portrait of growing up Asian American, detailing his journey from alienation and the traditional world of his parents to assimilation and acceptance in the world of journalism. Tour.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Music, Biography, Asian American, Asian Literature, China

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1994

About the author

Benjamin Fong-Torres (Fāng Zhènháo) is an American rock journalist, author, and broadcaster best known for his association with Rolling Stone magazine (through 1981) and the San Francisco Chronicle (from around 1982).

Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Fong-Torres' father, Ricardo Fong-Torres (born Fong Kwok Seung), changed his surname to Torres and posed as a Filipino citizen in order to emigrate to the United States. His family later adopted the hyphenated surname, Fong-Torres. He is the brother of Shirley Fong-Torres.

He was portrayed in the 2000 film Almost Famous by actor Terry Chen. The fictional version of Fong-Torres was character William Miller's editor at Rolling Stone.

In real life, Fong-Torres was a writer and senior editor of Rolling Stone from almost the magazine's inception. He conducted interviews for Rolling Stone of entertainment figures including Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, comedian Steve Martin and Linda Ronstadt's first cover story in 1975. A Fong-Torres interview with Ray Charles was awarded the Deems Taylor Award for Magazine Writing in 1974.

Fong-Torres was also a rock DJ for San Francisco radio station KSAN-FM in the 1970s. On television, he is the Emmy Award-winning co-anchor of the Chinese New Year Parade broadcast on KTVU (Fox) in San Francisco. In recent years, he has published Hickory Wind, a biography of Gram Parsons; The Rice Room, a memoir; The Hits Just Keep on Coming, a history of Top 40 radio, and two compilations of past articles, Not Fade Away and Becoming Almost Famous (published in May 2006). His book with The Doors (The Doors By The Doors) was published by Hyperion in November 2006. Since July 2005, he has written the bi-weekly column "Radio Waves" in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday Datebook. He is also a contributing editor to Parade magazine, and the music editor for TONEAudio, a web-based audio publication. He is now the host of "Backstage" which is aired from 7-9 am and 7-9 pm on San Francisco's KFRC-FM.

Reviews

[Ant Tellez · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.3/5.0

I have a true appreciation for anyone who seeks out knowledge across many different forms, and Ben Fong-Torres' story is a testament of this very statement. A heartwarming, sorrowful, and witty experience that aims to enlighten us about the minority paradigm of Chinese-Americans.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully crafted autobiography that balances humor, grief, the difficulties that come with belonging to multiple spheres, race, and the trials and tribulations of adolescence/early adulthood with an expert hand.

This book illustrates key struggles and experiences that many Chinese American children encounter when growing up in a family business. From language barriers affecting how we communicate with our parents to having our resumes begin when we're five, Fong-Torres' book perfectly encapsulates the lives of many young Chinese American children within these 260 pages.

[JiaMin Luo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about a Chinese family, Fong, who migrated to San Francisco. It talked about how hard life is for the Fong in a different country.

The most mesmerizing part of this autobiography is when the author talked about how his traditional Chinese cultures had hindered his life. The Fong had a family business and all the children in the family (including the author, Benjamin) were required to help out afterschool. Because of this restriction, the children felt trapped. They couldn't live a normal life like their friends, such as hanging out or having some free time. And they were meant to live under their guilt if they rebel. As the children grew up to marriage ages, their parents wanted them to follow the chinese culture, which meant getting married with a Chinese. Thus, this cultural habit became one of their obstacles in life.

I can really connect to the author, because my family has a business and they want me to help out whenever I have time or whenever they are busy. Usually, I am stressed out because I don't have enough time to finish my school work. However, I don't dare to protest for myself because as a child in the family, I need to respect my elders. In addition, I don't want to live with guilt.

[Hayward Chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Done celebrating the Asian Pacific Heritage Month. Granted, the story of the Fong-Torres family is as unique as their last name. Who has a brother killed by Chinatown tongs and a sister who ran the most popular Chinatown tour business, and himself was an editor of the college paper of San Francisco State in the troubled/colorful 60's and editor of Rolling Stones who interviewed so many celebrities? Yet, this book strikes many chords of me, a millennial, still fresh off the boat in the US.

Most Chinese American memoirs focused on conflicts between Chinese and American values, this book offers more. "The Rice Room" gives us a glimpse of how the American "melting pot" worked in practice. If any of the Fong-Torres children had any identify crisis, this book doesn't say. The biggest conflict seems to that their mom wanted Chinese in-laws. Born and raised in the golden state, they doesn't seem to much problem assimilating into the mainstream at all.

The most valuable thing chronicled by the book was their psychology as the Fong-Torres children grew up. How they squeezed as much as fun as they could out of the tedious and tiring job as their parents' restaurant, how they think of their parents (I find the writing here honest and credible), how they think of their parents home villages. I can never experience these myself as I wasn't born and raised here.

This narrative history book also filled up some knowledge gaps of mine. Although Iris Chang's Chinese in America cited heavily on it about interesting facts (such as how Chinese was treated in the segregated South), there was a few that I found interesting. Arranged marriage between Hong Kong women and (usually older) men from the Golden Mountain (金山阿伯）was common in the 60's and 70's. My Toishanese mom knew about several. I was surprised that it lasted all the way through the 80's, after HK has become one of the Four Asian Tigers.

Of course, Chinese Americans today faced a different, arguably more welcoming, US than the one the Fong-Torres children in the 50's and 60's. In the year of 2015, probably more Chinese Americans will be from Mandarin speaking families than those of all Cantonese dialects combined. Yet, the themes that parents hold high standards of success on their kids, trying to keep them as "Chinese" as possible are everlasting.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

The unflappable Ben Fong-Torres' story is an exemplary American one, surely an exemplary Chinese-American one, the latter inflecting the former in a way skeptics might suggest somehow limits The Rice Room's powerful narrative arc -- but I'd say, the memoir actually achieves, as few memoirs do, a redemption of the scene it happens to report from. Fong-Torres, raised one of five kids in a Chinese-American first generation family, his father a cook, his mother a seamstress, both Chinese immigrants to the Oakland, CA area just before WWII (the "Torres" in the name was a ruse on the father's part to emigrate from the Philippines), is raised their son in the family restaurant's rice room, where he scuffled with his siblings and found time to get through school after he put in full-time work in the family restaurant. The story is one of miseducation by American popular culture, the flight from the family economic expediency, staying out of the Vietnam War, and ultimate excellence during the Rolling Stone heyday as Jann Wenner's News Editor; the subtext is his weaning himself from the family's Confucian proverbiality, which begins and ends in the demand the children marry a Chinese. The narrative twist is none other than Fong-Torres' older brother, who turns from the author's companion in adolescent petty larceny to actually endeavoring to insert himself as an honest agent in a gang war that overwhelmed SF Chinatown in the late-Sixties. The book is marvelously detailed: frankly, it took me so long to start the book, although I've known of it since it came out, because I had never been impressed by Fong-Torres' criticism; but it's his reporter's sensibility that most shines here, so I came to realize it wasn't Fong-Torres' criticism Wenner's magazine needed. Now Fong-Torres is the subject of a documentary in the works about his life and career, as a journalist, as a radio disc jockey, as a man of parts. The author merits his impressive book.

[Heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being fairly young and not terribly hip, I didn't know who Ben Fong-Torres was before picking up this book. It was given to me by a friend.

That said, I enjoyed it a lot and found the way that he wrote down his memories to be refreshingly chronological, clear, and unpretentious. I've read a few memoirs recently that really jump around or try too hard to pull off some crazy literary feat, and this is not one of them--it reads like what it is, a memoir written by a journalist.

I found the story of Fong-Torres' family, from how his parents came over from China to how things came full-circle when he finally was able to visit their villages as an adult, to be an interesting, well-flowing read. Anybody interested in the history of northern California, the Chinese-American experience, or rock and roll should check it out.

[Yi Wang · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a Chinese family, the Fong family immigrated to San Francisco. It likes other Chinese books it also talked about how hard life is for the new immigrated family in a different country. I can actually relate to many things that were in the book, maybe because I am Chinese, so we shared many culture in common. Especially I remembered the book were talk about how is a traditional Chinese culture that children were required to help out afterschool for their family business. In this book is about the author, main character feel bad about he couldn't live a normal life like their friends, such as hanging out or having some free time.
Well, personally I never have family business that I need to take care, but I always curious and feel its fun to help your parents in the store or other business they were doing. But I had asked my friend, which she had been always help out in her mother’s store, and she told me that sometimes she doesn’t have time to help out in the store, or just she doesn’t what help out, but the parents were always make them feel guilty about it. Which she is suffering from help her parent but don’t have much free time, or help her parents and have less free time for herself. I just feel that help out in parents’ store shouldn’t be a requirement, if you want do then you do it, if you don’t want help out, then don’t do it. It should never be feel force about doing something.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a memoir from Ben Fong-Torres, the music journalist whose well-known among music fans as one of the great journalists from Rolling Stone's early days.

Despite the title of this book, I expected/hoped it would focus heavily on Fong-Torres's time at Rolling Stone—the rock stars he interviewed, the crazy things he saw, etc. It says a lot for Fong-Torres's writing and personal story that, though the book didn't deliver much of that, I was hooked. His story is, at heart, the same as a lot of other kids who grew up in the 60s and 70s—a story of rebelling against the future their parents' planned for them. But in Fong-Torres's case, it happens against the backdrop of a parental culture that was particularly conservative and bound to tradition. And an interesting thing is that Fong-Torres and his siblings manage to do a nearly unbelievably good job living up to parental expectations in some ways (e.g., Ben continues working at his parents' Chinese restaurant even after he lands the gig with Rolling Stone) while rebelling in other ways (e.g., acquiring non-Chinese spouses).

There are some odd things about this book. I didn't understand why all the women Ben dated (including the one he eventually married) were less fleshed out than your average cartoon character. But in general, Fong-Torres makes up for the shortcomings with some really moving, and at times tragic, passages.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book to my son, who was assigned it for his Understanding American Culture class in college--it is a great desctription of the experience of Asian Americans in the peri-WWII time period. His parents emigrated at a time that the country was fairly hostile to their immigration--they came in illegally. Fong-Torres had a foot in two worlds--he was on the one hand growing up in San Francisco at the time of the birht of rock and roll. On the other, he was the son of immigrants, who had a work ethic that was impressive--so he was writing for a newspaper, d-jing for a radio station, going to school full time, and working in his parent's restaurant as much as he could. he had the experience of being the majority race in school and the minority race. He has the perspective of his parents and of his own. He is highly bound to his family and yet not bound to please them. It is complicated, and the book allows us to see that. In addition, his brother was killed, probably by gangs that he was trying to help, so it has hints of some of the elements that make up the modern problems in the US. Veyr interesting read

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author gives a background on a plethora of topics such as Asian-American history, San Francisco & Oakland history, rock & roll music, journalism, and others. If one wants to consider this piece a must for Asian-American history study, I wouldn't disagree. If the reader prefers to read this book from a less-serious slant, then "The Rice Room" is still light-hearted enough to engage the casual reader. The author's adolescent and teenage years has elements that remind me of the TV show "The Wonder Years" and the rest of the author's experiences are genuine and authentic. I didn't embrace all the rock & roll information but the author did his job in discussing and exposing the reader on this topic (the reader can probably skim through these phases though). Besides that, "The Rice Room" is easy to enjoy since it has human elements that are easy for the reader to empathize with.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this biography. Although the stories of children of Chinese immigrants have a similar sort of story to tell, this is the first one I've read from the male perspective.

As in many of these I have read, Fong-Torres' parents have a restaurant business which uses all the family members as employees, with long grueling hours. The children were still required to achieve top grades in school despite their work requirements and the necessity of daily evening attendance at Chinese school.

Much is shared about the traditions of the family, the attempts of the children to avoid those traditions, and the eventual realization of the importance of these traditions.

Ben Fong-Torres is a well known writer, especially in the music scene. We learn of his trials, tragedies, and loves. I recommend it highly.

[Tiffany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is chock-full of SF and Oakland references, which makes it fun if you're from or have spent time in the bay. Interesting description of what it was like to grow up as a first generation chinese-american. The author does a good job of describing the frustration of not only cultural but also language barriers he has with his parents, considering they only speak cantonese and he has a limited, or childish cantonese vocabulary. The book also describes the formation of The Rolling Stone (as he was a writer and their West Coast editor) as well as highlights the excitement and turmoil of the bay area as he viewed it as a college student in the 60's. It's a quick read, a little scattered in topics, but still interesting.

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read. Almost Famous, a Cameron Crowe film, must be one of my favorites and Ben Fong-Torres was a brief, but memorable character in the film. So when I heard a friend had read his auto-biography, I quickly grabbed it. Two things interested me about this book - one that Ben was raised in the Bay Area. I'm always interested to learn more about the places I lived/have lived, especially recent tales of history which are easier to imagine because you can still visit many of the locations referenced. Second, Ben was an early writer and editor of Rolling Stone, which I've been subscribing to for years. Overall, the book dealt mostly with growing up in a Chinese family in the Oakland Chinatown.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Memoir of Ben Fong-Torres. I found this fish-out-of-water story fascinating, as I generally find most books involving clashes between two different cultures very interesting. In this one, Fong-Torres describes his parents' strong adherence to Chinese culture even after living in America for decades, and his own (and his siblings') significant branching off from that into mainstream American culture. In his case, the branching-off was pretty extreme since he was a reporter at Rolling Stone in the 70s--talk about American culture.

I also really enjoyed reading about the Bay Area in the 60s and 70s. This was my old stomping grounds in college and afterwards, but in the much more boring 1990s. I loved reading about this particular time and place.

[Denise Kruse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Son of immigrant Chinese parents, Ben Fong-Torres tells about growing up in the Bay Area in the 50s and 60s as the 3rd of 5 children, right in the middle, respectfully working and living in his family’s restaurants. He knows what he likes, pop music and writing, and ultimately rebels against his parents’ career choices for him– but his work ethic and timing help become a very successful writer and broadcaster– a Bay Area celebrity of sorts. He seems to have always been in the right place at the right time with the right attitude. It was interesting going behind the scenes of early Rolling Stone magazine. Having grown up in the East Bay, I loved learning about Oakland’s Chinatown, his Asian heritage and experiences during an era of much social change.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This could have been so much more interesting than it was. The writing did not draw me into the lives of the characters or make me relate. I really wanted to like this book too, since I love reading about different cultures and the concept behind the Chinese/Amercian assimilation issues are fascinating. He just couldn't step out of his own body and examine the words from a viewpoint of someone that did not live his life. I was disappointed. I couldn't even make it through to the end.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book for experiencing the point of view of a Chinese American growing up and working hard in California while trying to meet his parents traditional and at times racist expectations but also staying true to himself and his passion for journalism and people of all ethnicities. It's nice to read about the 60's/70's music scene and political turmoil through the eyes of Ben Fong-Torres, a hard working, talented writer, with a cool headed multicultural perspective.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. I really liked the first 2/3's of the book. Growing up with immigrant parents in 40's-50's, and then at SF state in 60's. I loved his connection with history and the tales of struggle as an immigrant family. I lost a bit of interest when he got older and worked at Rolling Stone. I didn't feel pulled in to the story as he was cycling through women and working at RS. And then it became about his brother, and I lost steam.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book. A memoir about a man who defies expectation and becomes a radio rock deejay..the son of immigrant Chinese parents who grows up in the back of a restaurant that his parents own. The book explores identity, racism, living b/w two worlds, and living one's life in a way that feels authentic. This is a hopeful book.

[Allisonv · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very evocative of northern California/San Franciso. Great childhood stories and tales of the 1960s rock and roll universe. Gave me a lot of insight into the beginning of these subcultures. B F-T is a lesser-known creator of Rolling Stone Magazine, which was originally a counter-culture rag. I'll be willing to guess that my stepdad partied with him. Lots of funny details.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

I also read this for a sociology class at BYU-I. This book gives an interesting look at a Chinese family growing up in America. It explores the clash between the parents, who are very strict in their culture, and the children who become "Americanized." It was pretty good but has some really bad language and other things some might find offensive.

[David Gleeson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating account of cultural/ social conflicts during the sixties as seen from a nascent journo's POV - a journo whose name is as synonymous with Rolling Stone as Jann Wenner. I stumbled a few times on the overly meticulous listings of girlfriends and apartments, but ultimately that sets up the events surrounding his brother for a heartrending story.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fong-Torres' memoir was definitely journalistic in style rather than literary; the writing was functional, but not beautiful. Still, this is a thoughful and interesting meoir. I enjoyed it both as a look at a Chinese-American family--with the parents strongly but futilely resisting the Americanization of their children--and as a look at Bay Area culture in the 1950's, 60's and 70's.

[Margaret Rosen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the local color and his story is interesting, but this seemed very superficial to me. I wish he'd gotten more in-depth about his family relationships, time at Rolling Stone, etc. He is such an engaging guy with a fascinating life, I might have to go see if he wrote a more detailed autobiography later.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

U.S. immigration is a daily topic in the news these days, sometimes accompanied by heated exchanges of vitriol. If a reading of "The Rice Room'' were a prerequisite before popping off, the world would be a better place. In fact, this labor of love has indeed been included on required reading lists at some educational institutions. Find and read this book for yourself and see why.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very interesting and well-written memoir of an immigrant finding his place in American society. Equally interesting are his descriptions of coming-of-age in 1960s San Francisco and working as one of the earliest staff members on Rolling Stone magazine.

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good description of what it was like to be an immigrant. Some parts, such as going to the Chinese school on Saturdays, reminds me of our own family's situations. Also, very good visuals of living in the bay area during the sixties.

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

He's the iconic Rolling Stone editor with the funny name portrayed in Almost Famous, one of my favorite movies. But who knew that he juggled working overtime for Rolling Stone with waiting tables at his family's Chinese restaurant? Crazy, man.

[catabingbong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was what most would call "heartwarming" and/or "lovely" but I say it was pretty KICK-A**. I could relate to much of the story, from the Cantonese words to his trip to China. I loved this book!!...even though some parts are a drag.

[Dufus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I read that captured the experience of growing up in a Chinese restaurant family. It accurately captures the conflict between familial responsibility and desire to pursue one's own ambition. An entertaining read through and through.