Generic Asian Man Number Three/Delivery Guyġ. Turner and Wu's tension is established early here, with Turner's experience as a Black man in America coming up against Wu's desire to escape a similarly marginal, but meaningfully different stereotype.įirst, you have to work your way up. Why do you care what she thinks anyway? You heard what you are to her: Asian Guy. I don't want to be doing this any more than you do. This episode resonates with the novel's ending, in which a similar event plays out.Ī Taiwanese man singing John Denver is a pretty perfect capsule of the novel's central focus: the complex process of Americanization for Asian people.
Willis is describing his dad's performance of "Country Roads" by John Denver on a karaoke stage. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and the gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and by the time he's done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Straight who's been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home. go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night.
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