Ira Sukrungruang’s memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy is a work firmly cemented in the in-between. This first-person account of Sukrungruang’s “adventures” as a Thai-American coming of age in the suburbs of Chicago offers ample opportunity for cultural comparison, a subject fully explored through the retrospective lens of a child version of the author.

both writers recognize the unavoidable aspects of sensationalism in their subjects; they alternately mock and embrace it. Despite the similar titles, however, no one would mistake one for the other.