Annie Choi doesn’t mince words. Her debut work pokes a biting finger at her irritating, yet irresistible mother, but is self-deprecating and heart-warming at the same time. Choi, 30, never meant to become an author and assumed her life lacked fodder compelling enough for a memoir. She soon realized, however, her family was an entertaining (and exasperating) enough subject to write about.

 

What was your mom’s reaction to the book, particularly to playing such a starring role in it?

Before the book was published, she read the first half and called my brother and yelled, “Anne such terrible, how I raise her? She monster!” Then she read the other half and “got it” and called me up. “Anne, I think maybe you OK at writing. Maybe. Maybe not.” At my reading in L.A., my parents bought 3,000 copies and made me sign them for every priest, nun and friend they’ve ever known.

In Happy Birthday, your mom seems pretty intent on you getting into Harvard. Is she satisfied with a B.A. from UC Berkeley and an M.F.A. from Columbia?

She was devastated when I got rejected from Harvard, but it’s not like Cal is some online correspondence school. When I told her I was going to Columbia, she was so thrilled, but then I said it was for writing and she was like, “WHY? Who go school to write? You already know how write!” She kept telling me to transfer to the law school. Just a few months ago she said, “OK, you finish book so now you go law school!”

Did the process of writing the book change how you saw your mom at all?

I understand her a little more, but our relationship hasn’t changed at all. I still get impatient, and she still gets under my skin and roots around in there.

How have people responded to Happy Birthday?

A student wrote me a letter saying that he loved my book and it was “way better” than Death of a Salesman and Go Tell it on the Mountain. That’s really all I can ask for.

-Nina Ahn