If you have ever been to Hawaii, chances are you have had this kind of lunch. I literally lived right across the street from L & L on Oahu and went there all the time for their plate lunches. So. Good. There were also several little lunch wagons in the area that had plate lunches with meat and scoops of white rice or another starch. My favorite, however, is when we would get together with our local friends and they would dish up a homemade plate lunch. THE BEST. What is in a Plate Lunch? But no matter who I saw, no matter who I talked to, rich or poor—every single person was smiling. Every one of them was full of life and happy. At the beginning of every chapter, there is a Filipino recipe. At the end of the book, there are lots of pictures starting from when he was a baby right up to him and his teenage son, Little Joe. Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Todd Mundt. Allison Hagan adapted it for the web. I want them to be dazzled by the lights and electrified by the music. I want them to connect with my stories and my voices and my characters. I want them begging for more.

I sold out massive arenas everywhere I went. I owned a house in the Hollywood Hills. My son was about to graduate from private school. He didn’t have to scrounge for spare change to get lunch from a vending machine like I did when I was a kid—he had a fancy debit card to buy f***ing filet mignon in his cafeteria! Mixed Plate is also something that brought me to tears - and not entirely because of how funny it is. Jo opens up about his life - his trauma of being an 'other' in school, of learning how to make people laugh to fit in, of dealing with family drama and hiding it deep down inside. Jo strives to gain his mother's approval - an Asian mother's approval is of the highest honor - and I think she will be proud of this book.

Thank you

I don’t want them to leave my show being like, “Oh man, the depths of your pain and heartache, f***!” I want them to cheer, “Bro, you killed it! I never laughed so hard in my f***ing life!” In this book, I get serious about my funny. And I want to make you laugh a little while I do it. I’m like Hawaii’s favorite lunch—the mixed plate. Little bit of this, a little bit of that. My book Mixed Plate is too. I remember my dad said to me, he goes, ‘Don't do what I did. I always wanted to be a pilot. And now, look, I'm still dreaming about being a pilot,’ ” Koy says. If you are not familiar with this “mixed plate”, half Filipino/half white comedian, you need to read this book, listen to this Audible and/or watch his Netflix specials. His is truly a story of the immigrant dream of “making it” in America and not only making it himself but also sharing and raising his whole family up with him. Koy's life really has been filled with a lot of ups and downs, which totally makes me understand why he and a large company decided to publish this book. We need more stories about multiracial people, about immigrants, about artists, about family conflict involving divorce and loved ones with severe mental illness. And we need to see those stories be filled with love and joy as well as not sugar coating the hardships many people like Koy face regularly.

In all the ways I’d ever hoped, I’d made it. And yet, even as I walked down the streets of my childhood with a film crew follow- ing along, even as I realized just how much I’d accomplished, deep in my mind I could still hear my mom the very first time I told her I was gonna be a comic. A hilarious, fearlessly honest, and profoundly relevant memoir by superstar Filipino-American comedian internationally celebrated for his family-inspired humor. Of initially fitting in with other mixed-children on military bases to becoming the only half-Filipino child in his school and his of his mother’s struggles to seek out fellow Filipinos in the ’70s in a time of racial tension. Along those lines, as he told the story of his life, including his early childhood in the Philippines, later childhood in Tacoma with his whole family, and then teen years with just his mom and sister, he consistently summarized life events he had *just written about in detail* the chapter before. It felt like the editor either 1) didn't trust the reader to remember what they just read or 2) never sat down and read the book chapter to chapter.I get up there onstage in front of a thousand people, I have one goal—to make them laugh. To help them have fun and escape all their problems, even if it’s just for a few hours. I wanted to like this book more than I actually did, because the truth is: for being a memoir written by a comedian (my favorite genre), it was a bit of a slog. This is something I've experienced firsthand and always had to keep to myself because you live in a country where it's almost normalized and accepted, where Asian culture tends to be quiet and not really speak up,” he says. “And now we have a generation of people that are speaking up now and defending and letting our voices be heard.” What? Josep, you want to be a clown? Is that what you’re telling me, Josep? Ha? You want to make your living being a clown??” Yeah, Mom. A clown. That’s what I want to be. Jo Koy built a successful stand-up career mining his Filipino heritage, with sold-out shows and three Netflix specials.

I just love the culture there. I love the people there. One of the things I love to eat is the mixed plate. When you look at the mixed plate, it has everything, every ethnicity is on the plate. Korean entrées include kalbi and meat jun. Some side dishes are taegu, a dish made of shredded codfish, and kongnamul muchim, a dish made of seasoned soybean sprouts. Kalua Pork is another very common plate lunch entrée. Traditional Kalua big is slow cooked in a pit (an imu) with ti leaves and/or banana leaves. That method is a little intense for a typical weeknight meal at our house so we usually do the “cheater” method. This version is made in the slow cooker and tastes just like authentic shredded Kalua Pig. We love adding cabbage to the mix, which is also very common for this style of lunch.I liked the writing style ... like his comedy routines, it was funny and sarcastic. I liked him as a person and he sounds like a nice caring fella. But he also speaks from the heart as he talks about his childhood and the struggles and hustles to achieve his dream. As a head's up, there is swearing. The middle section of his career, when he details his early comedy shows, his hustle in Las Vegas and move to LA, was a lot of fun to read. Koy’s struggle with identity stems from his white father and Filipino mother divorcing when he was 10 years old. His father moved to another state, leading Koy to cling to his Filipino side. "Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo" by Jo Koy.