Thisismylife Quotes

“When I met white kids' parents, they always asked me bullshit questions about race, where our family was "from," and used words like Oriental. I was like a toy in their house, but Joey's parents were Asian so it felt like family. I never felt like I had to carry the burden of the whole Chinese diaspora, or that everything I did was a statement about my people and where we're from. (84)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“My mom had this habit of speaking Chinese in front of Americans. She didn't give a fuck that they probably thought it was rude. I was caught in the middle. There's a part of me that loves immigrants who throw niceties to the wind and just speak their tongue all day, every day. The older generation never felt integrated in society anyway so they don't care if you see them as "rude." I mean, cot damn, "rude" is probably a compliment compared to the shit people used to say to them. This is our language and it's your problem if you don't speak it, right? But another part of me feels, ".What's Dave got to do with it?" (68)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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 National Guild Honorable Mention for piano when I was around twelve and promptly quit. My parents had me play tennis and take karate, but ironically, I quit tennis two tournaments short of being ranked in the state of Florida and left karate after getting my brown belt. The family never understood it, but I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to play their stupid Asian Olympics, but I wanted to prove to myself that if I did want to be the stereotypical Chinaman they wanted, I could. (189)
I had become so obsessed with not being a stereotype that half of who I was had gone dormant. But it was also a positive. Instead of following the path most Asian kids do, I struck out on my own. There's nature, there's nurture, and as Harry Potter teaches us, there's who YOU want to be. (198)
Everyone was in-between. The relief of the airport and the opportunity to reflect on my trip helped me realize that I didn't want to blame anyone anymore, Not my parents, not white people, not America. Did I still think there was a lot wrong with the aforementioned? Hell, yeah, but unless I was going to do something about it, I couldn't say shit. So I drank my Apple Sidra and shut the fuck up. (199)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“People has jokes, but at this point I was meaner, so I didn't even think twice. You said some shit, I threw you into a wall. Teachers, counselors, psychiatrists, family, and friends couldn't understand. I was a nice kid, smiled a lot, had a genuine interest in books, culture, and anything that I could get my hands on to read. But there was this switch that would go off. Between getting hit at home and all the things people said about me, I just couldn't take it. I couldn't walk away. I was determined to get even, I wanted to hurt people like they hurt me.”
― Eddie Huang , Fresh Off the Boat

“My parents always insulted each other. Mom was a good student and thought school was important. Dad agreed even though he had a chip on his shoulder because he never got good grades. He learned most things from running around on the street, but in a funny way, my dad was smarter. My mom never remembered what she learned in school because she just memorized stuff for tests; it was my dad, who had bad grades, that actually remembered everything he learned.”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“People reacted with hate and fear and then community by wearing American flag shirts, bandannas, crying, huddling, lost, and senseless. They packed the gymnasium to talk about how they felt. A lot of students were from New York so I understood their pain. For them, it was personal. But for me, it was surreal. I didn't take it personally: I'd never subscribed to America. I never felt included in this country. To this day, someone tells me to go back to China at least three times a year and I live in downtown New York. (222-233)
Americans. Americans. AMERICANS. They've called me chink. They've treated me like the Other. They laughed at my food, they laughed at my family, they laughed at my culture, they wouldn't give me a proper interview because of my face. Americans. They did that. When 9/11 happened, I was an observer. I mourned for the victims and felt for the people as individuals, but this wasn't my fight. It wasn't the victims' fight, either, though. They were caught in the middle as always. The little people suffer for the crimes of few. This fight wasn't between the people that flew the planes and the people in the towers. We all got played by politics we had nothing to do with. (223)
If you want your voice to be heard, you have to fight. There's no other way around it. You can't expect people to seek you out; if you know you're right and you have the answers, then it's your duty to tell the world.(224)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“That's not how you eat hot pot! That's some new-age Taiwanese thing. In Beijing, you don't mis the sauces."
"Son, I'll say this the nicest way I can. I'm Chinese and you're an idiot."(247)
My entire life, the single most interesting thing to me is race in America. how something so stupid as skin or eyes or stinky Chinese lunch as such an impact on a person's identity, their mental state, and the possibility of their happiness. It was race. It was race. Apologies to Frank Sinatra, but I've been called a "ch!gg@r," a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a pawn, think the idea of America is cool, but at the end of the day wish the world had no lines. (249)
You have tattoos and others have piercings, but for me, there's nothing that says more about me than the food I choose to carry every single day. As a kid trying to maintain my identity in America, my Chinese was passable, my history was shaky, but I could taste something one time and make it myself at home. When everything else fell apart and I didn't know who I was, food brought me back and here I was again. (250)
...
Ironically enough, the one place that America allows Chinese people to do their thing is the kitchen. Just like Jewish people became bankers because that was the only thing Christians let them do, a lot of Chinese people ended up in laundries, delis, and kitchens because that's what was available...get in where you fit in, fool. (250)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“Mon, they said they were going to 'fuck me up'!"
"No, we didn't, he fucked himself up."
"No one is fucking anyone! Who taught you to fuck people up? ...”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“By the time Christmas came around, while all the other kids made cards, she had me sit in a corner and face the wall because I wasn't a "believer." (27)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“I wasn't an Irishman, but I knew how it felt to have someone standing over you, controlling your life and wanting to call it something else. From the people at Christian Fellowship to First Academy to my parents to Confucius to thousands of years of ass-backwards Chinese thinking, I knew how it felt. Everything my parents did to me and their parents did to them was justified under the banner of Tradition, Family, and Culture. And when it wasn't them it was someone impressing Christianity on me and when it wasn't Christianity it was whiteness.
Those other kids had more vocabs than me and more knowledge of the American canon. At that age, I didn't know what Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind, or even A Christmas Story was. There were so many gaps in my American cultural understanding because we just didn't get it at home. It always hurt me writing or debating because I didn't share their references, but that summer I was determined that it wouldn't stop me. I wouldn't try to talk about things they knew anymore. I would use the references that made sense to me and make them catch up. Before I ever read a marketing book in college, I understood what "pull marketing" was. Unlike the other kids, I wasn't memorizing words or events. I was speaking from experience. For the first time, I wasn't arguing just to argue. I wasn't wildin' out' couse Iw as bored. I finally found another mind I fucked with and it was just my luck he was dead-ass Irishman. (123-124)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“I wanted to get free. (129)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“Every culture had dishes that prized the simple and traditional over showy flavors and elaborate presentations. The things that my not seem worthy on first look, but over time become an indispensable part of your life. If you grow up in an immigrant culture, there are going to be foods you eat that other people just don't get. Not the universal crowd-pleasers-the fired chickens and soup dumplings-but the everyday staff. We Southerners, for instance, love grits, boiled peanuts, and fried okra but nobody else understands. For Chinese people, it's things like rice porridge, thousand-year-old eggs, or tomato and eggs. Simple things that don't impress at first look, but instead offer nuance: strange textures and sublime flavors that reveal charm over the years. The things people left off menus, only to find an audience during family meal. (159)
Whether it's food or women, the ones on front street are supermodels, Big hair, bit tits, bit trouble, but the one you come home with is probably something like cavatelli and red sauce. She's not screaming for attention because she knows she's good enough even if your dumb ass hasn't figured it out yet.
The best dished have depth without doing too much. (160)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“[Dr. Henton] reindorced a lesson my pops tried to teach me with his hands: NEVER EVER EVER back down if you're right. If you have evaluated all the perspectives, gone around the round table, and come back around with the same opinion, then walk right up to the offending party and tell'em why you mad. I realized that as wild as I'd been up to that point, I still curbed my opinion ever so slightly because I was surrounded by conservative white people at Rollins. (202)
You can't idolize and emulate forever. At some point, you gotta cut the cord and go for dolo. I thought of Locke and his idea of tubula rasa. I realized that I needed to build arguments, philosophies, and a style grounded in my era and experiences.
....I remember she called me a shotgun: "You have all this energy and it's unruly, but like a shotgun, you need the barrel to direct the buckshot just enough." (203)
That was it for me. I wanted power, I wanted respect, and I never ever ever anyone to tell me about my face again. (208)
...money, power, and respect drive the world. (211)
People were so competitive and saw every job someone else got as a job that they lost. I didn't agree and always told people what Cam'ron said: "Can't get paid in a earth this big? You worthless kid!" (212)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“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, Fresh Off the Boat

“I was sick of immigrants not getting the credit they deserved. I was sick of the Jean-Georges of the world making a killing on our ingredients and flavors because we were too stupid to package it the right way. I was sick of seeing other Asian kids like myself walking to school with their heads down. I was sick of seeing them picking snow peas in the dining room after school and I was sick of not having a voice in America...My main objective with Baohus was to become a voice for Asian Americans. (264)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone." (258)
My parents were Fresh Off the Boat, I'm a chinkstronaut, and my kids will be on spaceships. I didn't allow America to sell me in a box with presets and neither should you. Take the things from America that speak to you, the excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99. Cue Funk Flex to drop bombs on this. All my peoples from the boat, let'em know: WEOUTCHEA. (272)”
― Eddie Huang, Fresh Off the Boat

“She shoveled in mac and cheese, fighting a mounting desire to . . . she didn't know what. Move. Scream. Flip her plate and fling her dinner everywhere, just to see what happened. At the same time, a separate part of her---distant, yet disapproving---observed her every impulse. Judged her every impulse, and made Darya feel as if she were a Bad Person.
Oh, just shut up, she told her brain, but her brain didn't listen. She wondered if other people's thoughts crashed and bounced about like this, or if she was broken somehow.”
― Lauren Myracle, The Forgetting Spell