Mixed Plate: Chronicles of an All-American Combo

Product Information

MIXED PLATE: Chronicles of an All-American Combo by Jo Koy is the comedian’s autobiography and is written and narrated by himself. I knew the minute this came out, I had to listen to it on Audible. I normally prefer to read rather than listen to a book, but Jo Koy is such a fantastic storyteller so I really believe this is the best way to get all the nuances of the autobiography. (And besides, I love hearing him imitate his mother!) 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 know how hard it was for me to get in here,” he says. “And I just want to provide this one opportunity. You know, I opened up the door and now I want to let others in.” Jo Koy built a successful stand-up career mining his Filipino heritage, with sold-out shows and three Netflix specials.

Walking through the streets of the Philippines, this place I’d once so briefly called home but which held the key to so much of who I am, it hit me that it was a land of contradictions. Koy approaches difficult conversations in a disarming way with humor. But in the book, he writes that it took time for him to feel comfortable incorporating his heritage into his comedy. 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.

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 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. Koy's depictions of his mother and his son, much like his stand up, are consistently done with care and love...while also providing some levity to otherwise heavy content. I really appreciate this. 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.”Seeing how hard his mom worked impacted Koy. The duo connected with other Filipinos at church and started building community, he says, and soon enough they were renting the Knights of Columbus hall next door to throw Filipino events that featured performances from her kids.

He includes deeply personal topics, including sharing stories about his older brother who has violent schizophrenia, as well as “some real dark stuff, the stuff we don’t talk about often enough as immigrants” he writes in the blurb, such as “mental health, poverty, drinking.” My mom literally had to build up the courage to walk up to people and ask them what they were,” he says. “And that's what that joke is. It's like, yeah, it's funny, but just imagine my mom's struggle at that point.” And that’s why I’m writing this book. Because after all this time, all my struggle and sacrifice, my mom still doesn’t really understand. 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?

What's in the box

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 was working in post production the first time I heard of Jo Koy. We were working on the release of one of his specials and my job was to make sure the closed captions were correct. This took me almost three times as long as any other job because I was in tears laughing for so much of it.