asian

What’s so complicated about your life? he asks. You have no fiscal responsibilities, no taxes, no mortgage, no nine-to-five job, no job whatsoever except to learn and be a student. Do not boast, he says, that your life is complicated. Do not boast, period.

But for most Chinese people themselves, a good meal is about balance, for reasons of health, pleasure and aesthetics, and mild, understated dishes are just as important as those that cavort with the taste buds and dance on the tongue. For every sweet-and-sour pork on a real Chinese restaurant menu, you’ll normally find a light broth or a dish of

But the experience of Asians in America isn’t just a scaled-back or dialed-down version of the Black experience. Instead of co-opting someone else’s experience or consciousness, he must define his own.

Fighting rednecks because you were a punk was far better than fighting because you were Asian, and fighting with allies was far better than fighting alone.

As a nonwhite person, the General, like myself, knew he must be patient with white people, who were easily scared by the nonwhite. Even with liberal white people, one could go only so far, and with average white people one could barely go anywhere.

I found the Vietnamese in America both intimate and alien, but Vietnam itself was simply alien.

Racial self-hatred is seeing yourself the way the whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy. Your only defense is to be hard on yourself, which becomes compulsive, and therefore a comfort, to peck yourself to death.

Be the beating myth to his tin man chest. Be sesame oil to his white bread.

You are a good student, as all Orientals are. Despite myself, I felt a small surge of pride. Like all good students, I yearned for nothing but approval, even from fools.