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Las Cucarachas
Life isn't easy for Peter Kim. The super and other thugs in his neighborhood are out to get him. His best friend suddenly hates his guts. And he's stuck babysitting his little brother for the summer. But things hit absolute rock bottom when his apartment gets burglarized and he loses his most-prized possession. Undaunted, Peter tries to move on. But his misfit friends, all members of the Warriors, just won't let him. Spurred on by their teasing and the desire to shut them up, he sets out to find out who ripped him off. What follows is an investigation like no other that chronicles the most important 48 hours of a young boy's life. Finalist for the Asian American Writers' Workshop Literary Award..
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Set in Elmhurst, Queens, NYC, this book is the second installment of Park's Elmhurst Trilogy, made up of Boy Genius, Las Cucarachas, and Rated R Boy.
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Set in Elmhurst, Queens, NYC, this book is the second installment of Park's Elmhurst Trilogy, made up of Boy Genius, Las Cucarachas, and Rated R Boy.
188 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2004
1 person is currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Yongsoo Park
5 books3 followersYongsoo Park is the author of the novels BOY GENIUS and LAS CUCARACHAS, as well as THE ART OF EATING BITTER: A HAUFRAU DAD'S JOURNEY WITH KIDS, an easy collection about his children, his parents, and being a father, and RATED R BOY, a memoir about growing up in 1980s Queens.
He grew up in a lower-class immigrant enclave in New York City. Much of his writing is about his childhood in a NYC that's long gone. He is a Luddite, who lives without a cellphone and gets around NYC mostly on a bicycle. He is on a quixotic one-man crusade to give his children as much of an analog childhood as is possible.
His latest book is the memoir RATED R BOY: GROWING UP KOREAN IN 1980s QUEENS.
He lives in Harlem and has a MFA in Creative Writing from the Old School.
He grew up in a lower-class immigrant enclave in New York City. Much of his writing is about his childhood in a NYC that's long gone. He is a Luddite, who lives without a cellphone and gets around NYC mostly on a bicycle. He is on a quixotic one-man crusade to give his children as much of an analog childhood as is possible.
His latest book is the memoir RATED R BOY: GROWING UP KOREAN IN 1980s QUEENS.
He lives in Harlem and has a MFA in Creative Writing from the Old School.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 20, 2014
Pardon my French, but Las Cucarachas is fucking awesome!
Peter, a Korean-born, 12-year-old American had worked his ass off to get his Atari. When he found out his apartment was robbed, his comic books and Atari gone, he just wanted to forget it.. until he got clues about who might have just broken into his apartment. A misunderstood hooligan, Peter would not let the thief get away with it. Hell no!
Peter and his Korean descendant friends lived in a less-than-privileged neighborhood, where they formed a gang called the Warriors. It was nothing much, actually. They just walked around the blocks, stole from convenience store and watched pornos. Certainly not your typical goody-goody Koreans, but still far from real criminal gangs.
I can see why T. Cooper said that Peter is a modern-day Holden Caulfield. They're full of angst, use a lot of profanity, and yet they also have a "soft center". But I hate Holden and I love Pete. Peter complained a lot about people around him, but in the way that we'd usually do anyway and with a sprinkle of humor. He wasn't some rich kid who could get an Atari whenever he liked, so he had all the right to be angry. For a 12-year-old, I found him a likable character -instead of trying to philosophize everything, he kept it simple and just learned that it was a shitty world that he lived in.
Kudos to Yongsoo Park!!
Peter, a Korean-born, 12-year-old American had worked his ass off to get his Atari. When he found out his apartment was robbed, his comic books and Atari gone, he just wanted to forget it.. until he got clues about who might have just broken into his apartment. A misunderstood hooligan, Peter would not let the thief get away with it. Hell no!
Peter and his Korean descendant friends lived in a less-than-privileged neighborhood, where they formed a gang called the Warriors. It was nothing much, actually. They just walked around the blocks, stole from convenience store and watched pornos. Certainly not your typical goody-goody Koreans, but still far from real criminal gangs.
I can see why T. Cooper said that Peter is a modern-day Holden Caulfield. They're full of angst, use a lot of profanity, and yet they also have a "soft center". But I hate Holden and I love Pete. Peter complained a lot about people around him, but in the way that we'd usually do anyway and with a sprinkle of humor. He wasn't some rich kid who could get an Atari whenever he liked, so he had all the right to be angry. For a 12-year-old, I found him a likable character -instead of trying to philosophize everything, he kept it simple and just learned that it was a shitty world that he lived in.
Kudos to Yongsoo Park!!
May 11, 2024
So when you're a librarian, and you find a book on the shelf with a sun-browned spine label, letters faded to gray, and you open the book, you know it's trouble. Some 300 pound retard trying to write The Outsiders for Koreans. Or something. Forget about Jack in Lord of the Flies, Piggy could clean up this whole mob with one blow on the conch. Or maybe they'd all end up blowing his conch. Or something.
And as a librarian, I also found out this book was a ghost. I mean, I scanned the barcode, but no action. Dead. No item record. That means someone figured out years ago this book was a turkey, a bench jockey, and they weeded it from the catalogue. But the boy genius clerks we've got never actually pulled the physical book. So it was lying there. Like a dead Korean kid. Clutching a slice of pizza. That killed him because it was covered with Black Flag roach killer. Because that's the uplift of reading a book like this. Uplift! Uplift!
And as a librarian, I also found out this book was a ghost. I mean, I scanned the barcode, but no action. Dead. No item record. That means someone figured out years ago this book was a turkey, a bench jockey, and they weeded it from the catalogue. But the boy genius clerks we've got never actually pulled the physical book. So it was lying there. Like a dead Korean kid. Clutching a slice of pizza. That killed him because it was covered with Black Flag roach killer. Because that's the uplift of reading a book like this. Uplift! Uplift!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews