Transcript:
In the fourth grade we went on a class trip to Chinatown
Which was fucking dope,
I remember after an hour of slurping down soup dumplings by the pound,
We were let loose on the streets,
Greeted by the smell of fish sundried,
And the echo of language we couldn't understand.
Armed with about 20 dollars each,
We were free to buy whatever goodies and treats
Our little hearts so desired.
It so happened that all my little heart desired was a T-shirt.
It wasn’t anything special,
But it had dragons on it, you know,
It was COOL, I wanted it.
So I walked into the shop and I attempted to make the purchase
But I was stopped,
By some other kid's mom, she said,
“Oh sweetie you don’t want that,
That was made in China.
That’s off brand,
That’s no good.”
Off brand.
No good.
The class of my elementary and middle school was roughly 80% white
So me being half white meant that I wasn't white at all,
Meant that the asian highlights in my DNA
Was like piss on fresh snow,
They only noticed the yellow
And didn’t want to play anywhere near it,
Off brand.
No good.
But you know what?
I was okay with it,
Because at least I was something.
A token, slant-eyed, peace-sign flashing plushie, yes,
But cheap enough to get a laugh,
And get a pass for not being the same as everybody else,
For not being the right brand.
"What's your favorite food?"
"Pork fried rice."
Lie.
"Do you know karate?"
"Ha, YES!"
Lie.
"Who's your hero?"
"Jackie Chan, duh!"
Lie.
But all the lies felt like sake bombs exploding off my tongue,
Drowning my white classmates in a tsunami
Of what they told me Being Asian meant,
Because if I could fit in the kimono they already saw me wearing,
It wouldn't matter that those last few lines were all about Japanese culture,
And I'm Korean,
I fit the brand they saw me in.
And I saw it that way too.
That is, until I got called a white kid by a friend's Chinese exchange student
And realized,
In Asian eyes,
I was just as off brand as I was to my white classmates
Suddenly sixteen years of following my yellow brick road was white washed worse
Than Shyamalan’s Last Airbender,
And the path in front of me doubled back on itself
Into dead end,
What was left was a brand I had never seen before,
A bastardization of white and Asian,
The bastard child neither parent acknowledges
And wish didn't exist.
There's no best of both worlds
When neither one wants you
There’s no community to fall back on
When every community you’ve tried to fall back on
focuses solely on the different shades in your skin than the base tones shared,
There’s no good that can come from being nothing,
From being
Off brand,
No good.