|
Gil asks: In the following passages from a Time Magazine article (Alone on the Range, By Don Morrison, May 2, 2007) about a book written by May-Lee Chai, Hapa Girl (a memoir about her growing up half-Chinese in America), what does the last sentence, marked out in bold type, mean? Hapa Girl (the adjective is a Hawaiian word for mixed race) is published by Temple University Press. Why the book did not find a commercial publisher is a mystery. The writing is vigorous, and Chai’s descriptions of the murderous winters and corrosive boredom of the Great Plains are compelling. Besides, Chai is hardly an unknown: The Girl from Purple Mountain, the World War II family history she co-authored with her father, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award. Could it be racism, stalking the hapa girl once again? More likely, Chai’s book suffers from a surfeit of coming-of-age memoirs by Asian Americans, as well as a blessed obsolescence: China’s diaspora has largely fared well in the U.S. since Chai was a girl. Her father even tells her, “There’s no such thing as racism against Chinese. You just don't know how to get along with people.” If only. The U.S. has a curious preoccupation with race, which runs through its history like a varicose vein, half-buried and chronically painful. Just ask disgraced talk-show host Don Imus and the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, or any Arab American trying to board a flight. Hapa Girl is a reminder that Americans cannot have too many reminders of the un-American things they do when they’re afraid. | 
