“Suddenly, I was back, surrounded by my classmates again. Curious to know why it had taken me so much longer than everyone else, they swarmed me with questions. I lied.”
“Ha! You’ve done it! He’s clueless, blissfully unaware that you’re American, that you call the metro a Subway and practiced active-shooter drills in middle school.”
“Regardless of race, Americanness is still in your body. I can’t spot the distinction as well as, say, the Dominican-born jewelry vendor who could tell that my immigrant father was American. But I’ve seen some differences.”
“I speak a sort of poetic Italian and German,” I tell people. “I could tell you the word for ‘woman’ or ‘flower’ or ‘moon’ (the classic subjects of opera and art song) but not ask you for the check.”
People in the New Jersey Transit Newark Liberty International Airport Train Station bound for New York City: A man with blood on his face drinking Starbucks and A woman asking Starbucks blood man which side goes to Penn Station, swinging … Read More