Fresh Off The Boat

I first "discovered" Eddie Huang when my son auditioned for the role of Eddie on ABC's "Fresh Off The Boat" sitcom.  A few years later, I started watching his show "Huang's World" on Viceland, and I thought he sounded really intelligent and his worldviews matched mine.

I knew he was heavily into hip hop, and while I listen to some hip hop, I'm not as immersed as he is.  I was interested in reading about his growing up Chinese in America.

As I read through this book, I found that his experiences growing up ethnically Chinese in America was completely different from mine, due to the fact that he was a minority in Orlando, whereas Hawaii is much more ethnically diverse and there really is no minority here.  Also, I think his affinity for hip hop was due to him trying to find something to latch onto that represented who he identified with as a minority, whereas here in Hawaii we've established our own Hawaii identity that's an amalgamation of different cultures.

I've checked out pictures of his restaurant Baohaus.  I actually identified when he said that he didn't like how non-Asian chefs take classic homestyle Asian dishes and Americanize them.  Most recently, I see the poke craze around the nation and hate that they're taking a uniquely Hawaiian dish and bastardizing it with no nod towards authenticity.

But having said that, I thought it was kind of hypocritical that he is irritated at the cultural appropriation of the food of his ancestors by white people, yet he's adopted a very black American culture into his own life.  In all fairness, his use of ebonics (as far as I can tell) doesn't take much liberties and seems pretty "authentic".