Thisismylife Quotes

You can't convince yourself! You either believe or you don't believe." (28)

"She say you ask weird questions, but I say you're student, you supposed to ask! Her job to answer! I say you're lazy, if student ask, you answer!"
"Yeah! She told me my real great-grandparents are these white people named Adan and Eve!"
"Bullshit! But hey, Ciao Wen, be smart. Why you argue with her about that? You know they believe this stuff, just let them believe."
"But she told me I was going to Hell if I didn't believe and told me to ask God into my heart!"
""Ha, ha, yeah, she told me, too, think she do something soo good to help you. Whatever. You know it's lies, let those idiots believe. Just focus on real school. Don't be stupid and fight them, you'll lose." (30) ~ Eddie Huang

Why leave a country when you're on top? Whether it was another communist scare or the even greener pastures in America, no one ever gives me a straight answer. (The only thing anyone can agree on is that they still miss the island.) ~ Eddie Huang

What we did do was got to Chinese school. Whether you lived in D.C., Ann Arbor, New York, or Orlando, if there were Chinese people, there were Chinese schools where you went every Sunday to take Chinese Language and cultural classes. Chinese people would drive hours from every direction to take their kids to school. All teachers were volunteers and the parents chipped in to keep it going. While the rest of America went to church, we learned how to read right to left. ~ Eddie Huang

Unlike others who let it eat them up and took it to their graves, I refused to be that Chinese kid walking everywhere with his head down. I wanted my dignity, my identity, and my pride back; I wanted them to know there were repercussions to the things they said. There were no free passes on my soul and everything they stole from me I decided I'd take back double. (81) ~ Eddie Huang

For years, I wanted to know if there was one person, one voice, one individual inside me. All my life people would call me a chink or a chigger. I couldn't listen to hip-hop and be myself without people questioning my authenticity. Chinese people questioned my yellowness because I was born in America. The white people questioned my identity as an American because I was yellow.
No black or Spanish person ever called me chigger, but hustling all of a sudden got white people off my back. I was the same dude with a different job, but now I was finally "authentic" to white people, and it made me realized it's all a trap. We can't fucking win. If I follow the rules and play the model minority, I'm a lapdog under a bamboo ceiling. If I like hip-hop because I see solidarity, I'm aping. But, if I throw it all away, shit on my parents, sell weed, pills, and strike fear into unsuspecting white boys with stunt Glocks, now I's authentic? Fuck you, America. (171) ~ Eddie Huang

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. ~ Eddie Huang

Porridge is our soup, our grits, our sustenance, so it's pretty much the go-to for breakfast. For the first time, I ate with a bunch of other Taiwanese-Chinese kids my age who knew what the hell they were doing. Even at Chinese school, there were always kids that brought hamburgers, shunned chopsticks, or didn't get down with the funky shit. They were like faux-bootleg-Canal Street Chinamen.
That was one of the things that really annoyed me about growing up Chinese in the States. Even if you wanted to roll with Chinese/Taiwanese kids, there were barely any around and the ones that were around had lost their culture and identity. They barely spoke Chinese, resented Chinese food, and if we got picked on by white people on the basketball court, everyone just looked out for themselves. It wasn't that I wanted people to carry around little red books to affirm their "Chinese-ness," but I just wanted to know there were other people that wanted this community to live on in America. There was on kid who wouldn't eat the thousand-year-old eggs at breakfast and all the other kids started roasting him.
"If you don't get down with the nasty shit, you're not Chinese!"
I was down with the mob, but something left me unsettled. One thing ABCs love to do is compete on "Chinese-ness," i.e., who will eat the most chicken feet, pig intestines, and have the highest SAT scores. I scored high in chick feet, sneaker game, and pirated good, but relatively low on the SAT. I had made Na ~ Eddie Huang

Landlords in New York are generally the scum of the earth. They're beneficiaries of the worst kind of nepotism, eating off the good business decisions of their parents. They have no compassion because they've never had to work for shit to know how it feels to need a fucking break. (256-257) ~ Eddie Huang

I wanted to get free. (129) ~ Eddie Huang

Religion wasn't a big deal in our house. I don't think it was a big deal in most Chinese households. We always had photos of ancestors, organs, and incense in bowls, but the family unit was bigger than any religion, or government for that matter. Besides education, there weren't any social issues I remember my parents getting down for. ~ Eddie Huang

I'd fake the part for a second to infiltrate, gather intelligence, and then ditch it, laughing on my way back to the outside. That's the perk of being Chinese, you can walk through walls and no one really notices. (155) ~ Eddie Huang

Back then, when the culture was still building, people were loyal to stores, brands, and the cause. The style was retro-nineties, loud colors, vector or photographic driven, skinny jeans, selvage denim, lots of Japanese brands, and hip-hop/street culture content. There was also a political aspect to streetwear. Speaking for myself, I was sick of rocking logos for people. What people started printing their own shirts on AAA or American Apparel blanks, we got to rep the culture through the clothing. In the post-9/11 era, a lot of the more powerful messages about individuality, free speech, and what it was to be American manifested themselves in streetwear. (215) ~ Eddie Huang

Everything comes clear and you see exactly how you're goonna win the game: by doing you....I found my voice and no one was going to take it from me. (124) ~ Eddie Huang

Once again, my dad knew something I didn't. Looking back, I realize it wasn't just I was Asian. I was a loud-mounthed, brash, broken Asian who had no respect for authority in any form, wether it was a parent, teacher, or country. Not only was I not white, to many people I wasn't Asian either. (148) ~ Eddie Huang