Sep202013
As a Korean American adoptee in my early twenties, I think of myself not as Asian American, but just as a person, doing my thing, working for my pay, trying to get along. I am weaving my way through crowded streets toward the restaurant, an Asian woman on a bike. A young White man yells to me, grinning invitingly, drunkenly, “Heeey Miss Saigon!” Miss Saigon is being performed at the Orpheum, just blocks away. I realize I cannot ride a bike in my own city to my own job without being read by random White people as a prostitute.
