Rating: 4/5

Allowing this marinate allowed me to appreciate Yu’s satirical but respectful spin on serious topics like racial discrimination, class struggles, and Asian identity. The content is LOUD. It borders on discomfort and then pushes you a couple more inches over to make you think about how our concepts of culture, race, and people form our perceptions of the world. Extra points for creativity in the script-style prose used to denote the plight of Asians as performers in society.

Insights/Thoughts

• “There’s just something about Asians that makes reality a little too real, overcomplicates the clarity, the duality, the clean elegance of BLACK and WHITE, the proven template and so the decision is made not in some overarching conspiracy to exclude Asians but because it’s just easier to keep it how we have it.”The thought that black and white, binary, is simple to understand and how diversity, although beneficial, makes the taboo topic of race more complex and therefore undesirable. How the exclusion of Asians might not be intentional but rather as a method to maintain simplicity – to reduce categories. How can we change the default of culture to mean diversity as opposed to the duality of black:white?  
• “Your oppression is second class”. This one hit different. That oppression has layers and that someone else’s oppression should have more priority than someone else’s is bizarre, yet we do it all the time. We say things like “Well at least you didn’t have x,y,z happen to you” , “at least you have a positive stereotype”.  I don’t think all experiences are equal nor do I think we’ll ever have a perfect society, however, we shouldn’t be discrediting someone’s feelings/experiences because they aren’t headline-worthy. Listening and understanding should take precedence over labelling and categorizing our experiences based on perceived worth.
• “You might say, an Asian fellow, Asian dude, Asian Man. How many of you would say: that’s an American?” This quote essentially relegates Asians to the ‘Other’ realm while the White identity is preserved as the reference point. It is moments like these that I appreciate woke authors who can unabashedly say it like it is: social, institutional, cultural injustices still exist – the power of language can unite but also damage a minority’s identity.
• So we made it our own place – Chinatown. A place for preservation and self-preservation; give them what they feel what’s right, is safe; make it fit the idea of what is out there” I think this speaks the spirit of any disadvantaged group that has had to conform to mainstream society in order to survive. This passage is a testament to the strength of dark places and how they can also be safe havens for living in this world. I see elements of Stoicism and am appreciative of the skillful and honest optimism he employed here for anyone struggling to find themselves.

Favourite Quotes

It’s easy to squander your lines when you know there will always be more tomorrow. And the next day, and the day after that.

We don’t choose our circumstances. We will have to fall in love when we can. Stolen moments. Between jobs, between scenes. Not a love story. But our story.

There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them.