My parents weren’t drawn to the United States by any specific dream, just a chance for something different. Even then, they understood that American life is unbounded promise and hypocrisy, faith and greed, new spectrums of joy and self-doubt, freedom enabled by enslavement. All of these things at once.
-- Hua Hsu (chapter 2)

Importance: Here, Hsu neatly summarizes his parents’ complex relationship with the United States; neither his mother nor his father believed in easy myths of American exceptionalism. Instead, they understood the nuances and contradictions of the country, thus foreshadowing the analytic, considerate perspective that Hsu eventually uses in his own writing.

Making my zine was a way of sketching the outlines of a new self, writing a new personality into being.
-- Hua Hsu (chapter 2)

Importance: Early in the memoir, Hsu notes that his zines served as vehicles through which to form, construct, and articulate his own distinct identity. His opinions and taste in music and film...