A favorite story about adapting to life in America:

My paternal grandmother was born in New York City As a young widow, she waited tables and cooked in a Chinatown restaurant during the depression as the sole support of her extended family comprised of her mother, her brother, his wife and three children, herself and her own son. Saving just enough for her son's tuition, she sent him off on a train bound to college. He arrived in a strange city, and wandered about until he came across a Chinese-owned laundry. He introduced himself to the owner, offering to iron in exchange for a place to sleep. He stayed there during his first year at school, even though, in recounting the story years later, he told me the owner asked him to stop ironing -- it was the only way to keep him from scorching shirts.

On feeling truly American:

Striking up a conversation with a recent immigrant working in a local shop, I answered her question: "How long is your family here?" I reached back in my memory..."Gee, my grandmother was born in New York in 1896". "Wow", she exclaimed, "you're here over 100 years!" And she promptly turned to her non-English speaking co-workers to tell them this astonishing fact.

On feeling not fully American:

Growing up in New Jersey during the 1950's, I was acutely aware of being different. The schoolyard taunts and cruel comments are indelibly etched in my memory. My father told of a phone call he received from a stranger in the neighborhood, right after my mother died suddenly, demanding to know what horrible "yellow" disease we had brought into the community. We were always on guard, always told: "that's not for us". The stories of bias and discrimination were told and retold, so we would not be caught off guard by the harsh reality. To spare my own children from a similar experience, I live in an area where the Asian American population is relatively high. Still, we are different. My grade-school son sat at our dinner table, pulling the corners of his eyes tightly towards his ears, asking if that's what Chinese people's eyes really looked like, since a little boy at school had told him it was so.

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