Fresh Off the Boat by Eddie Huang

cry sometimes, too. I’d just be there in the kitchen or my room minding my business when she’d run out of her room after fighting with my dad. She’d grab her purse, the car keys, knock something over, and just let me have it. Same thing every time:
Ba bei zi mei!
    It was those two days every year that I cried, but then said to myself, Whoever you are, whatever you’ve done, wherever you are … if someone is doing something to make you feel that way, it’s probably not right. It’s the same feeling my grandfather had when he left the Internal Ministry. Everyone needs those moments. The times that something forces you to step outside of yourself and realize, yes, I’m sure there’s a reason for what you’re doing and I want to respect your idea of morality, but in my eyes, at this moment, that shit you’re doing over there? THAT shit, son? That shit ain’t right.
    I read everything I could about Charles Barkley during those years. I saw him on television getting made fun of for being short, fat, and unable to beat Jordan. I saw people hammer him for marrying a white woman, spitting on a girl, throwing someone through a plate-glass window, and not being a role model. But he was for me. I’d read about Charles and how he persevered. I figured, if this guy is being made fun of every day on national television and can throw it back at people, never forgetting to smile, I could, too.
    I read
Thank You, Jackie Robinson
. I read Hank Aaron’s biography and all the hate he faced breaking the home-run record. Without anyone to talk to, I just read books about sports heroes and the racial barrier. There wasn’t a section in the library titled “Books for Abused Kids” but there was black history and somehow, some way, it made sense to me. I listened to 2Pac. I remember when “Me Against the World” came out, Emery and I would just sit by the radio reading comics listening to that song over and over. People in Orlando never understood why two Asian kids were rocking Polo, Girbauds, and listening to hip-hop. We didn’t do it because it was cool. At private school, teachers, parents, and other kids looked down on us for listening to hip-hop. It was a “black thing,” downward assimilation. They didn’t understand why we had flattops and racing stripes in our heads, but we did.
        
And when you get stranded
        
And things don’t go the way you planned it
        
Dreamin’ of riches, in a position of makin’ a difference
    Pac made sense to us. We lived in a world that treated us like deviants and we were outcast. There was always some counselor or administrator pulling us out of class to talk. We stayed in detention and we were surrounded by kids who had no idea what we were going through. We listened to hip-hop because there wasn’t anything else that welcomed us in, made us feel at home. I could see why Milli wanted to pull a pistol on Santa or why B.I.G. was ready to die. Our parents, Confucius, the model-minority bullshit, and kung fu–style discipline are what set us off. But Pac held us down.
    After an hour or so, the cops brought me inside. My mom was in the living room. They spoke to me in the foyer.
    “Eddie, we need you to be very honest with us right now.”
    “Of course, I have been the whole time.”
    “Good. We spoke to your mother and your brothers, but we still have questions.”
    “Sure, come with me, let’s go somewhere my mom can’t hear us.”
    I remember thinking to myself, These cops probably don’t think I’m old enough or smart enough to use a red herring. I figured if I make them feel like I’m going to ask for privacy from my mom that I’d give them the real story. I told them to come with me to the dining room, where we sat down, and they took my mom outside. Realizing they were hungry for something, I told them, “Look, I really don’t like my parents …” I waited for them to process that, read their faces, and then proceeded. “But, really, who does