Unit 1: Vocabulary from Readings 3

drafting memos in smooth English,
able to order in fluent Spanish
at a Mexican restaurant,
American but hyphenated,
viewed by Anglos as perhaps exotic

Her rimless half-glasses glittered, and the precarious bun on the top of her head trembled as she shook her head.

My sister was always less easily intimidated than I was, and while she kept a stubborn silence, I said, “Thank you,” in a very tiny voice.

We had been sent to that school because my father, among his responsibilities as an officer of the civil service, had a tour of duty to perform in the villages around that steamy little provincial town, where he had his headquarters at that time.

He used to make his shorter inspection tours on horseback, and a week before, in the stale heat of a typically post- monsoon day, we had waved good-by to him and a little procession—an assistant, a secretary, two bearers, and the man to look after the bedding rolls and luggage.

Up to then, my mother had refused to send Premila to school in the British-run establishments of that time, because, she used to say, “You can bury a dog’s tail for seven years and it still comes out curly, and you can take a Britisher away from his home for a lifetime and he still remains insular.”

Occasionally it would shoot out its long yellow tongue for a fly, and then it would rest, with its eyes closed and its belly palpitating as though it were swallowing several times quickly.

When it was time for the lunch recess, I followed the girl with braids out onto the veranda.

It seemed like an eternity since I had seen her that morning—a wizened, affectionate figure in her white cotton sari, giving me dozens of urgent and useless instructions on how to be a good girl at school.

So if I have to choose, I’d choose “HAPA”. It means half Asian and half another race. It’s actually Hawaiian slang that I picked up in college. It’s meant to be slightly derogatory but I embrace it as a source of empowerment.

I was a confident and proud HAPA in Hawaii, but when I came back to Michigan, my predominantly white peers still saw me as a model minority statistic, exotic foreigner, and a token Asian in the classroom.