“
[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers
[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...
(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)
”
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Jess C. Scott (EyeLeash: A Blog Novel)
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You see, writers traveling to Southeast Asia visit indigenous communities. No writing quest will be complete without some cross-cultural comparisons. This exercise is a decisive moment in every author’s life. Equate it to a photographer meeting his first old man with a wrinkled face or the old lady with heavy earrings dangling from her earlobes.
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Merlin Franco (Saint Richard Parker)
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We’re at the crematorium having lunch,”—which struck Torn as a darkly funny thing to say—“but I’m glad you called.
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L.M. Weeks (Bottled Lightning)
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Why is she afraid?" he asked. "She's not Anjin-san. Just a little nervous. Please excuse her. She's never seen a foreigner close to before." "Tell her when the moon's full, barbarians sprout horns and fire comes out of our mouths like dragons.
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James Clavell (Shōgun (Asian Saga, #1))
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Facebook has been spreading across the continents faster than a highly contagious Asian bird flu!
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Gemini Adams (The Facebook Diet: 50 Funny Signs of Facebook Addiction and Ways to Unplug with a Digital Detox)
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Alamak, it's that Ed Saranwrap! I love his music!” As Ed Sheeran
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Kevin Kwan (Rich People Problems (Crazy Rich Asians, #3))
“
The next world is 'segregated'? You can go to the World of Yin only if you're Chinese?"
"No-no! Miss Banner, she not Chinese, she go to Yin World. All depend what you love, what you believe. You love Jesus, go Jesus House. You love Allah, go Allah Land. You love sleep, go sleep."
"What if you don't believe in anything for sure before you die?"
"Then you go big place, like Disneyland, many places can go try--you like, you decide. No charge, of course.
”
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Amy Tan (The Hundred Secret Senses)
“
her cheeks a slight Asian red;
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Ned Vizzini (It's Kind of a Funny Story)
“
A minute passes as we enter Little Tokyo. It's kind of similar to what you see in the movies, with a lot of signs in different languages with "engrish" translations underneath and those big red gates with the curved wood on top, whatever they're called. The passing people on the street are, understandably, largely of Asian descent.
... I get a couple looks, but I suspect it's 'cause my hair is a variety of shades not seen outside of an anime.
”
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Vaughn R. Demont (Coyote's Creed (Broken Mirrors, #1))
“
So what are we watching, anyway?”
“Fast six.” I realized the polite thing to do would have been to ask if he liked the Fast & Furious
series, but if he didn’t, I couldn’t date him anyway.
“And if I haven’t seen one through five?”
“Then you’re basically un-American. Besides, what’s there to know? Fast cars, pretty girls, hot guys, stealin’ stuff in ways that could never happen… aaand you’re all caught up.”
His beautifully chocolate brown eyes went skyward. “Let me guess, you’re a Rock fan?”
“And Paul Walker, and Tyrese… the Asian guy, and a little Vin Diesel action doesn’t go amiss either. Any way you look, you win.”
“I haven’t liked the Rock since SmackDown.”
I pretended to clasp my hands in prayer and closed my eyes. “Let him keep his gay card, Lord, for he knows not what he says.”
He grinned. “You’re lucky you’re fine.”
“Am I?” I lifted my brows. A queen did need his compliments, after all.
”
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S.E. Harmon (Stay with Me (The PI Guys, #1))
“
For my friend Fong,” he says, and begins singing John Denver. If you didn’t know it already, now you do: old dudes from rural Taiwan are comfortable with their karaoke and when they do karaoke for some reason they love no one like they love John Denver. Maybe it’s the dream of the open highway. The romantic myth of the West. A reminder that these funny little Orientals have actually been Americans longer than you have. Know something about this country that you haven’t yet figured out. If you don’t believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying “Country Roads,” try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to “West Virginia, mountain mama,” you’re going to be singing along, and by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.
”
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Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
“
In Berkeley and San Francisco, the revolution didn't seem to far away. A lot of white radicals, hippies, Chicanos, Blacks, and Asians were ready to get down. But i hadn't forgotten the hard hats and the red necks and the bible belt and the so called middle amerikans who had elected Nixon. I couldn't imagine how the "new left" was talking to those people, much less organizing and changing their minds. I decided the only way i would come up with answers was to on keep studying and struggling. I didn't know how half of what i was studying would fit in but i figured it would all come in handy some day. I read about guerrilla warfare and clandestine struggle without having the faintest idea that one day i would go underground. It's kind of funny when i think about it because reading that stuff had probably saved my life a million times.
”
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Assata Shakur (Assata: An Autobiography)
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Unlike other features on OkCupid, there is no visual component to match percentage. The number between two people only reflects what you might call their inner selves—everything about what they believe, need, and want, even what they think is funny, but nothing about what they look like. Judging by just this compatibility measure, the four largest racial groups on OkCupid—Asian, black, Latino, and white—all get along about the same.1 In fact, race has less effect on match percentage than religion, politics, or education. Among the details that users believe are important, the closest comparison to race is Zodiac sign, which has no effect at all. To a computer not acculturated to the categories, “Asian” and “black” and “white” could just as easily be “Aries” and “Virgo” and “Capricorn.” But this racial neutrality is only in theory; things change once the users’ own opinions, and not just the color-blind workings of an algorithm, come into play.
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Christian Rudder (Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves)
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So Japan is allied with Germany and they’re like “Sweet the rest of the world already hates us let’s take their land!” So they start invading China and Malaysia and the Philippines and just whatever else but then they’re like “Hmm what if America tries to stop us? Ooh! Let’s surprise attack Hawaii!” So that’s exactly what they do. The attack is very successful but only in a strictly technical sense. To put it in perspective, let’s try a metaphor. Let’s say you’re having a barbecue but you don’t want to get stung by any bees so you find your local beehive and just go crazy on it with a baseball bat. Make sense? THEN YOU MUST BE JAPAN IN THE ’40s. WHO ELSE WOULD EVER DO THIS? So the U.S. swarms on Japan, obviously but that’s where our bee metaphor breaks down because while bees can sting you they cannot put you in concentration camps (or at least, I haven’t met any bees that can do that). Yeah, after that surprise attack on Pearl Harbor everybody on the West Coast is like “OMG WE’RE AT WAR WITH JAPAN AND THERE ARE JAPANESE DUDES LIVING ALLLL AROUND US.” I mean, they already banned Japanese immigration like a decade before but there are still Japanese dudes all over the coast and what’s more those Japanese dudes are living right next door to all the important aircraft factories and landing strips and shipyards and farmland and forests and bridges almost as if those types of things are EVERYWHERE and thus impossible not to live next door to. Whatever, it’s pretty suspicious. Now, at this point, nothing has been sabotaged and some people think that means they’re safe. But not military geniuses like Earl Warren who points out that the only reason there’s been no sabotage is that the Japanese are waiting for their moment and the fact that there has been no sabotage yet is ALL THE PROOF WE NEED to determine that sabotage is being planned. Frank Roosevelt hears this and he’s like “That’s some pretty shaky logic but I really don’t like Japanese people. Okay, go ahead.” So he passes an executive order that just says “Any enemy ex-patriots can be kicked out of any war zone I designate. P.S.: California, Oregon, and Washington are war zones have fun with that.” So they kick all the Japanese off the coast forcing them to sell everything they own but people are still not satisfied. They’re like “Those guys look funny! We can’t have funny-looking dudes roaming around this is wartime! We gotta lock ’em up.” And FDR is like “Okay, sure.” So they herd all the Japanese into big camps where they are concentrated in large numbers like a hundred and ten thousand people total and then the military is like “Okay, guys we will let you go if you fill out this loyalty questionnaire that says you love the United States and are totally down to be in our army” and some dudes are like “Sweet, free release!” but some dudes are like “Seriously? You just put me in jail for being Asian. This country is just one giant asshole and it’s squatting directly over my head.” And the military is like “Ooh, sorry to hear that buddy looks like you’re gonna stay here for the whole war. Meanwhile your friends get to go fight and die FOR FREEDOM.
”
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Cory O'Brien (George Washington Is Cash Money: A No-Bullshit Guide to the United Myths of America)
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But when we asked Chao if she ever doubted her abilities during those years in office, she was wonderfully candid, and funny. "Constantly," she replied. "I'm Asian American, are you kidding? My fear was that the newspapers would have blaring headlines like: 'Elaine Chao Failed, Disgraced Whole Family.
”
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Katty Kay (The Confidence Code for Girls: Taking Risks, Messing Up, and Becoming Your Amazingly Imperfect, Totally Powerful Self)
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BAILIFF Juror [who is Asian] says she does not speak English. THE COURT [who is Asian] That’ll be denied. COUNSEL I request to voir-dire her. THE COURT That’ll be denied. The Asians pull that all the time. Bad
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Charles M. Sevilla (Law and Disorder: Absurdly Funny Moments from the Courts)
“
These same ABCs couldn't speak Chinese and didn't care---but you don't have shit without your native tongue. African slaves were forced by threat of physical punishment to abandon their native languages, but a lot of us just gave ours up with a shrug---these Uncle Chans convinced us to assimilate, shut the fuck up, and play the part. What they didn't understand is that after your have the money and degrees, you can't buy your identity back. I wasn't worried about degrees, but I cared about my roots. Even if I hated what it meant to be an Asian in t he American wilderness, i respected the Chinese home I was raised in. Usually I wasn't so vocal about Asian identity, but without my parents around, I felt a sudden duty to say something myself. It's funny how annoying I thought my mom was, but as soon as she wasn't around, i carried the torch for her.
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Eddie Huang (Fresh Off the Boat)
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To see the screen Jeremiah had to keep craning his neck to the right and lean toward me. His hair smelled like Asian pears, this expensive shampoo Susannah used. It was funny. He was this big tall football guy now, and he smelled so sweet. Every time he leaned in, I breathed in the sweet smell of his hair. I wished my hair smelled like that.
”
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Jenny Han (The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer, #1))
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This is such bullshit,” Trevor grumbled.
“Shut the fuck up, Trevor,” the man snapped.
“Hey, fuck you, Jet Li,” Trevor fired back, seemingly realizing the error of his ways when the stranger flicked his gaze towards him.
“Jet Li is Chinese, you racist fuck. Do I look Chinese to you, man?”
Atticus fought the urge to smile at the loaded question.
“How the fuck should I know?” Trevor wailed. “You all—”
“Jesus, please, don’t say all Asians look the same,” Atticus begged. “Die with some fucking dignity.
”
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Onley James (Moonstruck (Necessary Evils, #3))
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Why South Asian actors could be funny or nerdy but never sexy, yet South Asian actresses had to be.
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Aasif Mandvi (No Land's Man)
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GPS—whose voice I had decided sounded unnervingly like Chris Teasley’s, Westerfield’s assistant—took me to a storefront off Connecticut Avenue. It was a used-CD store, manned by a few slow-moving clerks. The customers were mostly in their twenties, along with a few smudged, bearded music lovers about my age. I walked up to one young man behind the register, flashed my ID along with a security picture of the Asian man who’d collected the gold coins in New Jersey, a perp in the Graham forgery case. He claimed he knew nothing. I asked four or five other people. Nobody seemed to know anything about funny checks or the Asian. Finally,
”
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Jeffery Deaver (Edge)
“
Reading a SoHo restaurant review in the New York Times for me is like reading Fifty Shades of Gravy. By the end of it, you're drooling and fully turned on for more."
Kim Lee
The Big Apple Took a Bite Of Me
Available on Amazon Books and Kindle
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Kim Lee
“
Right there, at his feet and mercy, I gawked up at him like a sex-starved, desperate housewife while he gyrated sensually. His eyes spotted the green bucks, and he knew the drill. He descended, thrusted his crotch towards my face, missing my tiny Asian nose by half an inch. Cross-eyed, I frantically and nervously stuffed the wad of dollar bills into his tiny shorts. Once satiated by the paltry deposit, he backed off and launched into a sexy repertoire for my eyes only.
”
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Kim Lee (The Big Apple Took a Bite Off Me: A funny memoir of a SoHo-living foreigner who survived NYC)
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Wash trading, as it was called, would have been illegal on a regulated US exchange, though the sight of it did not bother Sam all that much. He thought it was sort of funny just how brazenly many of the Asian exchanges did it. In the summer of 2019, FTX created and published a daily analysis of the activity on other exchanges. It estimated that 80 percent or more of the volume on the second- and third-tier exchanges, and 30 percent of the volume on the top few exchanges, was fake. Soon after FTX published its first analysis of crypto trading activity, one exchange called and said, We’re firing our wash trading team. Give us a week and the volumes will be real. The top exchanges expressed relief, and gratitude for the analysis, as, until then, lots of people assumed that far more than 30 percent of their volume was fake. Sam was less surprised that Binance was wash trading than by how badly they were doing it. “They were doing a B-minus job at market manipulation,” he said. One Binance bot would make a wide market in Bitcoin futures, and another Binance bot would enter and lift its high offer. If, to keep the numbers simple, the fair value of bitcoin was $100, the first Binance bot would insert a bid at $98 and an offer at $102. No normal trader would trade against either—why sell for $98 or buy for $102 on Binance what you could buy or sell on some other exchange for $100? But then, at regular and predictable intervals, the second Binance bot would enter the market and buy at $102. It looked as if a trade had occurred between two different parties, but it hadn’t. It was simply Binance buying from Binance.
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Michael Lewis (Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon)
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As I’m about to leave, Pearl says something under her breath. “Excuse me?” I ask. “I don’t know why you people keep coming here like this, taking up my time.” “You people?” I’m getting confused. “Just this morning, one of your relatives came in asking about room 1405. I told him about Mrs. Krausz and he got quite unpleasant.” My relatives? “I’m so sorry….I didn’t know that. I wonder which one of my relatives it was. What did he look like?” “He wasn’t Asian, which was kind of funny.
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Denis Markell (Click Here to Start)
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No, you idiot! If you love Rachel as much as you do, then you need to be that blue jay for her.
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Kevin Kwan
“
By Obama’s lights, there was no liberal America, no conservative America, no black America, no white America, no Latino America, no Asian America, only “the United States of America.” All these disparate strands of the American experience were bound together by a common hope: It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a mill worker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.
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Ta-Nehisi Coates (We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy)
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I’m not usually into Asian guys,” she blurted.
David resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “All right,” he said evenly, picking his drink up. “Fuck you, then.”
“Wait!” Her cheeks colored. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
“Because you’re not into Asian guys, I imagine,” David said, folding his arms.
”
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Nenia Campbell (The Darkest Night (Shadow Thane))