Alex Luu, Yolk Magazine
Summer 2003
If you’re looking for yet another I-am-Asian American-hear-me-roar chest pounding autobiographical novel, do not pick up Paper Bullets.
However, if you’re looking for a hilarious, cocky, honest, and no-holds-barred account of lust and life from a unique Hapa male perspective, this is a keeper.
Through endearingly side-splitting recollections, ruminations, and epiphanies, Fulbeck paints an intimate portrait of sexual/identity politics associated with being Hapa. One chapter about a “rice chaser,” white trash girl that demands Fulbeck to speak Chinese to her during sex is painfully funny. Fulbeck’s worldview is at once brutal and side-splitting.
His prose blends the raw confessional honesty of performance art and the richness of poetry, juxtaposed with clever references to movies and pop culture. Paper Bullets flows more like a stream of consciousness than straight narrative, moving at breakneck speed with staccato pitch and wondrous revelation, but never loses its audience for the entire glorious ride.
