Yellow Face marks my summation of multiculturalism.

To me to write well is to battle stereotypes. To write well is to create three-dimensional characters that seem human.

We are all prisoners of our time and place.

I felt pretty good growing up. I didnt feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.

This is the ultimate cruelty, isn't it? That I can talk and talk and to anyone listening, it's only air--too rich a diet to be swallowed by a mundane world.

I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said Deformed Mans Toilet, that kind of thing.

There's a reason why the form was originally silent