asian

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.

I have to confess, though, that I have a hard time embracing the nineteenth-century history of Chinese America as my history, because my ancestors were still in Korea, doing what, I don’t know; those records are gone too. I suppose I look like these Chinese men, but when I gaze upon those old photos, I see those Chinamen the way white settlers must

The Korean word jeong is untranslatable but the closest definition is “an instantaneous deep connection,” often felt between Koreans. Did I imagine jeong with this therapist? Why did I think she’d understand me, as if our shared heritage would be a shortcut to intimacy? Or more accurately, a shortcut to knowing myself?

You don’t like how you look, how you sound. You think your Asian features are undefined, like God started pinching out your features and then abandoned you. You hate that there are so many Asians in the room. Who let in all the Asians? you rant in your head. Instead of solidarity, you feel that you are less than around other Asians, the boundaries