by Chelsea Leone, SUNY Cortland
Posted in on Thursday, Jun 5
By day, Casey Han attempts to lead the life of Wonder Woman by sporting a pair of silver bangles on her wrist. By night, she hauls all her designer items in a garbage bag wondering where she will spend the night. In the novel, Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, Casey, the protagonist of the novel, discovers what the real world is like after graduating from the safety net of Princeton University. With an overwhelming sense of pride, Casey often refuses the help of others to try and make a point to herself that she can survive with thousands of dollars in credit card debt, and the hopes of someday discovering who she really is. After being thrown out of her house by her father and finding the man she loves in bed with two other women, life for Casey seems hopeless. She runs into a long lost friend of the family, Ella Shim, who takes Casey in off the streets so she can get a job and a roof over her head. But Casey soon realizes that she is not the only person in the bustling streets of Manhattan with problems. She sees men cheat on their wives, marriages fall apart, and money replace love. Casey has several love-hate relationships that both help and hinder her from having a steady lifestyle. Min Jin Lee instantly pushes the reader to cheer for Casey to be able to pay all her bills on time and to find a man that isn’t superficial or struggling with a serious gambling addiction.
Her relationship with her Korean-American parents, who have a difficult time assimilating to America, is shaky for the most part. She tries to move forward in a fast paced world, but is constantly pulled back by her disapproving poor mother and father who slave over dirty laundry at a laundry service day after day. Their main concern is that Casey gets married to a nice Korean man. However, Casey finds herself with men that are divorced, white, or refuse to marry again. She is never quite sure that she really loves any of these men because she is trying to find something about herself to love. She takes out thousands of dollars in loans to go to “B school” then works day and night as an intern. When she isn’t playing the role of businesswoman superstar, she is off looking for love or shopping for clothes she cannot afford.
On her road to self-discovery she takes classes at FIT where she learns to design and create her own hats. Fashion has always been her true passion and she works part- time at a department store selling accessories and couture hats. Under the wing of Sabine, a fashion guru and owner of the department store, Casey learns many life lessons and qualities about herself that she didn’t know she possessed. Sabine makes Casey realize that she has built up anger towards every man that kept her away from her dreams and anger towards her parents who try so hard to keep her close after pushing her away. Few people know that every morning while she chain smokes and drinks black coffee, Casey writes down a line of the Bible which she toys with in her mind throughout the course of her day. Her connection with religion is what keeps her head above water when she sees her younger sister get married first and friends from college with successful jobs and husbands.
Min Jin Lee brilliantly describes the hardships of being a single girl in New York City struggling to make it in the world. Not only is Casey a perfect example of a fresh college graduate today, Min Jin Lee truly captures the language and style of young women today. She gets into the heads of other characters in the novel giving insight into exactly what each character is thinking. Free Food For Millionaires is a page-turner that will keep you guessing up until the very end. Will Casey find her true love and an apartment of her own? Or will she forever roam the streets of New York window shopping and looking for love? This is an invigorating story that most young women can relate to that you won’t be able to put down.
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