SPAM IS TOFU FOR NON-VEGETARIANS

A passage from years ago caught my attention: "the first tentative married steps of a shy young virgin with Jesus in her heart. The uplift, the end of days. The heavens rain fire and blood; Christ, sin, Eden, rapture, salvation, Revelations, and the damned."
More or less this was a reading suggestion I did not heed.

Someone once also recommended that I should read The Da Vinci Code.
I tried. I gave it my best shot. I got one page in.
Good lord what codswallop.

[Savage kitten gave up in less than a page, the bookseller with whom I abstemiously pub-crawl during non-pandemic times finished the first paragraph. Hah! I got further in than they did!]



A relative positively lauded Memoirs Of A Geisha, and told me that I would really like it. I have never even tried to read it, as Oriental fantasies by jade-struck white men are not high on my list of must-reads.


I've read some Asian American literature. Fifth Chinese Daughter, by Jade Snow Wong, who was a classmate of my mother. The Chickencoop Chinaman, by Frank Chin, a very bitter man. Maxine Hong Kingston. Bette Bao Lord. Gish Jen. John Okada. Amy Tan's only decent book. And a few others.

Asianity, and Chinese-Americanness, are not major cultural identifiers for me. Understandable, because I am not Asian or Chinese. I am a Caucasian American, and a thirteenth generation Dutch American, who lived in the Netherlands as a child because my parents went overseas when I was two years old. My first two languages are English and Dutch. While abroad I also learned colonial Indonesian, plus bits of German, Afrikaans, French, and Yiddish.

I started hanging out in Chinatown after I came back to the States because I was desperate for someplace else, I could find foods and ingredients that I was familar with -- sambal, sweet soy sauce, and noodles -- and no one would accusatorily comment on my "foreign accent".
It was a safe place.

Nowadays, even though I can speak Cantonese and read Chinese, I still look at C'town with Dutch American eyes. But it's a solid part of my comfort zone, a safe place.
Still looking 'in', but with a somewhat better view.
Marginally less 'outside'.


The phrase that gets my dander up is "go back where you came from". Of which I've been the recipient every year, nearly every month, since I returned. Dude, I was born in the Los Angeles area, kindly go 'F' yourself. 食蕉。

Everyone is precisely where they should be.
Where ever they are, they belong there.


In San Francisco I am not a foreigner. Still more or less an observer, but this city is a safe zone.
I do not particularly want to visit the rest of the country, as my exposure to "real Americans" has on the whole not been a pleasant experience.

Their bizarre ideologies are also offensive.
Likewise their drinking rituals.
And their religions.
Sports.



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