sarcasm in form of a t-shirt (268/365)
rant ahead.
so earlier this week someone noticed the book I was reading (Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence) and asked me if I actually read it in English. Today I wore this shirt and it reminded me why I got it-- because I found it funny and sarcastic and a little bit of a sad reflection of social-cultural mores/perceptions in this country. Pretty much all my life a lot of folks (even the Asian ones) have asked me if I'm Chinese. It always bugs me that before I can even open my mouth that my origins are much more important to them than who I am (or at least my last name is...being the most common Chinese last name...then there's my looks, but let's not go there). Why, oh why, can't I just say I'm from the planet of Zaphod Beeblebrox and that my parents were green headed aliens?
(for the record, my parents immigrated from south korea about oh, i don't know, decades ago, in the 1960s, and I was born in a crazy melting pot of a town called Flushing, Queens, NYC).
sarcasm in form of a t-shirt (268/365)
rant ahead.
so earlier this week someone noticed the book I was reading (Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence) and asked me if I actually read it in English. Today I wore this shirt and it reminded me why I got it-- because I found it funny and sarcastic and a little bit of a sad reflection of social-cultural mores/perceptions in this country. Pretty much all my life a lot of folks (even the Asian ones) have asked me if I'm Chinese. It always bugs me that before I can even open my mouth that my origins are much more important to them than who I am (or at least my last name is...being the most common Chinese last name...then there's my looks, but let's not go there). Why, oh why, can't I just say I'm from the planet of Zaphod Beeblebrox and that my parents were green headed aliens?
(for the record, my parents immigrated from south korea about oh, i don't know, decades ago, in the 1960s, and I was born in a crazy melting pot of a town called Flushing, Queens, NYC).