*How to Write the Great Chinese American Novel
Karen Lam*
All of the Chinese people must have small eyes.
And of those eyes, they all must be wearing glasses. The hero must be fully Chinese, preferably from a good school.
He should do math problems alone. That is mandatory. If the hero is a Chinese woman, she is very skinny. She must be as smart as the man.
She will know the difference between they’re, there, and their. The heroes must eat rice for every meal. Rice for breakfast, rice for lunch,
and rice for dinner. Occasionally, they will have rice stuck to an article of clothing. The Chinese-American will get straight A’s. And later on in life,
they will go on to an Ivy League college. The Chinese-American will talk very weirdly. They will talk like they are
chopping up their words like they chop up their vegetables. Chinese Americans do not have brains. Instead, they have calculators
where their brains should be. When you take tests, the best seats to take are the ones beside
Chinese Americans, because they obviously know all the answers. There must be one part where tests are being returned to the students,
and all the Chinese Americans will be comparing test grades. We will always keep to ourselves, most likely because we prefer to read. Whenever
you see us, we will always have our heads buried in a book. Chinese Americans always hand in their homework on time. Never once,
will you see a need for having to talk to them for homework problems. Chinese Americans are nerds. All they care about is academics. They have
absolutely no social life. If people ask you if you’re Asian, and you answer “yes”, they will automatically
assume you are Chinese. Us Chinese Americans are fluent in gaming language. Yes, that means we know
“GG”, “LOL”, and the word “PWN”/”POON”/”PAWN”. Besides being fluent in gaming language, we are also fluent in the English language.
Next to our calculator-brains, we also have a dictionary in our...