asian

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

many Asian American novels, writers set trauma in a distant mother country or within an insular Asian family to ensure that their pain is not a reproof against American imperial geopolitics or domestic racism; the outlying forces that cause their pain—Asian Patriarchal Fathers, White People Back Then—are remote enough to allow everyone, including

The man or woman who feels comfortable holding court at a dinner party will speak in long sentences, with heightened dramatic pauses, assured that no one will interject while they’re mid-thought, whereas I, who am grateful to be invited, speak quickly in clipped compressed bursts, so that I can get a word in before I’m interrupted.

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.

We are the carpenter ants of the service industry, the apparatchiks of the corporate world. We are math-crunching middle managers who keep the corporate wheels greased but who never get promoted since we don’t have the right “face” for leadership.

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’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.

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.

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?