asian

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.

My brother was kind of like a middle school boy and also like a freshman at UC Berkeley in the 1970s.

Readers, teachers, and editors told me in so many words that I should write whatever felt true to my heart but that since I was Asian, I might as well stick to the subject of Asians, even though no one cared about Asians, but what choice did I have since if I wrote about, say, nature, no one would care because I was an Asian person writing about na

Minor feelings occur when American optimism is enforced upon you, which contradicts your own racialized reality, thereby creating a static of cognitive dissonance. You are told, “Things are so much better,” while you think, Things are the same. You are told, “Asian Americans are so successful,” while you feel like a failure. This optimism sets up f

My last piece of advice would be to focus not on the result, but instead, the process and the journey. Again, Asian people love predictable outcomes. But to succeed in a creative profession, you really need to love it. And if you love it and are great at it, and passionate about constantly becoming better at it, you will find success no matter what

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.

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

Most Americans know nothing about Asian Americans. They think Chinese is synecdoche for Asians the way Kleenex is for tissues. They don’t understand that we’re this tenuous alliance of many nationalities. There are so many qualifications weighing the “we” in Asian America. Do I mean Southeast Asian, South Asian, East Asian, and Pacific Islander, qu

It’s always startling to come across Cha’s videos in the company of other artists, as if I’m seeing a relative whom I haven’t seen for years in a bright public space. But what are you doing here, I want to ask, where have you been?