CULTURE CONTENT — PAPER SON

As a young Chinese American kid growing up in suburban California in the 1980’s through the 1990’s, one of the earliest ways I felt the orientalist gaze was through song. There was the rhyming song with accompanying hand gestures: “Chinese (pull the outside corners of your eyes down), Japanese (pull the outside corners of your eyes upwards), dirty knees (point down to your knees, maybe this was a reference to the proliferation of early 20th century laborers), look at these (lift your shirt up to show your nipples)!” I repeated this once at home to my Chinese American parents after...