Summary

Chang writes this chapter with the second person singular pronoun "You" and the reader is to understand that he is writing about himself and his life. He writes about growing up in Hawai'i and how concepts of race are different there than in the continental United States. He feels that he became Asian American only when he went to college on the continent where he was a minority for the first time. He writes briefly about the history of Hawai'i and how his peers in college were struggling to figure out their identities.

Chang writes about panethnicity and how diverse Asian and Pacific Islander identities have been conflated under the general term "Asian American." On the continent, Asian Americanness "was a bottom-up project of unity in diversity" (142). He sees examples of racism against Asian people as well as how they...