“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.”
The pilot gave all of the instructions twice, once in English and once in Spanish. I had never heard “amarre el cinturón de seguridad” from that crackling airplane speaker. It was so much like just flying to a different … Read More
“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.”