The Ending of Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee

Damianne

1 year ago

Synopsis

Free Food for Millionaires is the second book by Min Jin Lee. I read Pachinko years ago and loved it, so I was excited to read this story. Casey, her sister Tina, and her parents Leah and Joseph moved to the US when the girls were young. Growing up poor in Queens, New York, Casey Han is determined to make it, but she needs to navigate both cultural expectations and personal ambitions. A Princeton graduate, mired in debt, she wants to enjoy all the finer things in life while claiming her slice of the American dream. Figuring out how to do that, when to fight her way alone, and when to ask for and accept help are a challenge.

Verdict

There are many storylines in Free Food for Millionaires. Although the main storyline is about Casey Han, there are also storylines about her friend Ella, her sister Tina, her parents, her patron, Sabine, and various people at the church. These storylines all weave together to create a fascinating, captivating story portraying various aspects of the Korean-American experience.

I spent most of a weekend reading this book because I wanted to see what would happen to Casey, and how she’d end up. I loved seeing Casey become more of herself, although I often feared that she’d make a choice that would set her back. However, I can empathize with Casey. It’s not easy finding your way between cultures or making it in New York. But despite many setbacks, Casey demonstrates resilience and personal growth as the book progresses.

The end of the book was disappointing to me. All the storylines were left open. Perhaps that’s the perfect ending to convey how unpredictable life is, but I felt unfulfilled. What’s your take on the ending?

Themes Explored

I did enjoy the central themes in this book, including the immigrant experience, cultural identity, and the pursuit of the American dream. Lee masterfully explores these themes, depicting a nuanced perspective of the Korean immigrant experience in the US.

Spoilers

When she graduated from Princeton, Casey only applied for one job. When she doesn’t get the job, she doesn’t know what to do. Her father wants her to go to B School at Columbia but she’d already deferred it a year. She wanted to make her own decisions. She’s not sure what’s next for her. With Casey, Tina, Leah, and Joseph at dinner, Casey talks back to her father, a big no-no in their culture. Her father’s response is to beat her, and when she refuses to apologize, he kicks her out of the house.

Gathering her things, and with about $200 from Tina, Casey leaves home and intends to live with her boyfriend, Jay. However, she finds him having a threesome and leaves the apartment, even though she has no place to go. She checks into the Carlyle Hotel for the night, and enjoys the luxuries. The next day, while shopping for new work clothes that she can scarcely afford, she runs into Ella, a fellow Korean woman that she went to school with. While they were not friends going up, Ella always wanted to be her friend and invited her to live with her.

Casey is agnostic, but after meeting a fellow agnostic turned religious at her university, she started reading the bible every day, writing a reading each day that she struggled with. While the rest of her family was very religious, she had her own complicated relationship with God. However, she often went to church with Ella, although she preferred to avoid Ella’s fiancé, a Korean man very full of himself called Ted. Prompted by Ella, Ted helped her get a sales job at the company that she applied for after university, Kearn Davis.

Casey eventually got back with Jay and they got engaged. But since she was a child, she used to get visions of her life. Unable to get a vision of her life with Jay, she broke up her engagement. It didn’t help that he tried to foist himself on her parents, once when her mother visited and she asked him to stay in the kitchen, and again at Ella’s wedding when her father at first ignored him, and then pushed him away.

He raised his voice. “Do you get that? You can’t just leave me. I won’t forgive this. I won’t forgive you leaving me. I fucking will never forgive this.” “I’m sorry,” she said as quietly as possible. But there had been no picture—somehow the irrational made more sense to her than his very reasonable threat.

When Casey broke up with Jay, she rented a studio apartment on her own. But after dating Unu, Ella’s cousin, for a few months, he asked her to move in and she did. However, Unu had a gambling problem and Casey had her own debt issues. She also acted in very traditional ways, never asking Unu about money, and never understanding the extent of his addiction. However, after going on a trip with him to Foxwoods, where he played blackjack, she got worried seeing how serious he was about gambling. Although he made $16K that trip, she knew that he also lost a lot. After he lost his job, he seemed to have no interest in getting another job and spent more time gambling, and losing, finally giving his watch and car to his bookie.

Casey started attending NYU Stern for B School. In the summer, she got a coveted summer internship at Kearn Davis with Hugh’s help. Hugh was a flirt but nothing was going on between them at first, although he kept trying his luck. Then, on an overnight golfing trip, the two of them slept with each other.

In a conversation with Unu, Casey later confessed to him about her infidelity and they broke up. His ex-wife also left him for her childhood sweetheart, whom she later married, so he was very sensitive to cheating.

After the breakup, Casey moved in with her friend/boss of her part-time job, Sabine and Sabine’s husband, Isaac. Sabine had offered to pay for her to go to B School, with a dream that she would take over her fashion business. However, Casey wanted to make it on her own and declined, which Sabine didn’t understand. She didn’t understand why Casey wouldn’t let her help, but Casey didn’t want to owe anything to anyone but herself.

Casey had met a bookstore owner, Joseph, when she entered a bookstore one day. Unable to really afford it, but wanting to make his day, she bought a first American edition of Jane Eyre for $1500, on credit. It was almost all the credit she had left. They used to often ride the bus together; he loved her hats and her sense of style. However, when she left Unu’s she didn’t see him anymore. It was only when he died that she saw his obituary in the paper. She took time off from work (on the weekend) to attend. At the memorial, she met his ssister-in-lawand found out he’d left her all of his wife’s (Hazel’s) hats. He’d given her one before and wanted her to have the others. He loved that she wore hats, some of which she made herself.

When Casey was offered a full-time job at the end of her internship, she considered whether to accept it. In the end, she decided to decline it and also to not finish B School. She wasn’t sure what she would do. At brunch with Ella, she met Unu again. He was living with Ella after being evicted. She was worried about meeting him again, but he arrived before she had time to leave.

Other Storylines

Tina

Tina got married during university with Chul. His family were well off than hers, and they treated her family poorly. After getting pregnant soon after the got married, Tina took time off from med school while Chul continued. She really wanted to finish school but mothering came first. She hoped to be able to attend.

Leah

Leah and Joseph continued to live life as usual. However, when a new choir director joined the church, he noticed Leah’s voice and gave her more solos. Despite having misgivings, she gave him a ride to get food after choir practice one day. Being infatuated with him, and very traditional, Leah was uncomfortable as a married woman with a single man. However, she didn’t think anything when he asked her to get in the back seat of the car with her. There, he had sex with her even though she was crying and she said no.

Leah felt sick for weeks and skipped church, and sometimes work. Worried, Joseph asked Charles to call her. When he did, he tried to tell Leah that he was waiting for her, that he would come to pick her up to leave her husband. Leah was kind of flattered, but wanted to forget what happened in the back seat of the car. Blaming herself for tempting him, she wanted to die. When she didn’t say she’d go with him, he turned on her, thinking that he was the only one in love.

When Leah returned to church, she was singing when she had a spontaneous miscarriage. Joseph was confused because he’d had a vasectomy but at the hospital, Casey told him it had a 99% chance of success. However, she confronted her mother and found out that Charles raped her.

Casey went to visit Charles and found out he was having an affair with another married woman, a friend of her mother. She confronted him about raping her mother and told him to quit his job. As she left, she took the work he was proud of, which was a music score that he was working on. At work, she shredded it.

Ella

While she was pregnant, Ella found out she had herpes. Having never been with another man besides Ted, she confronted him. She wanted to die. Ted admitted that he’d had an affair with a woman at work, Delia.

Ella gave birth without problems to Irene. But she no longer wanted to have anything to do with Ted. Ella tried to overdose on codeine, at Tina’s wedding, but was saved. She’d asked Ted for a divorce.

Going back to work after Irene was a few months old, finding nothing for her to do at home with a full-time nanny, her former boss, David, confessed his love for her. She loved him back. After her divorce from Ted, David and Ella got married. Ted got back with Delia and married her. At first, he was fighting for joint custody with Ella. Delia wanted this because she loved children but was afraid she couldn’t have any biological ones. However, after a medical emergency which Ella helped him with with, Ted reconsidered his fight with her. He let her have the townhouse and full custody (with shared weekends and holidays).