also consider myself a North American-born Chinese. For the purpose of this book, I am an Asian North American. We are hyphenated people, whether the hyphen actually appears or not. Fred Mok also shows this dynamic understanding of identity in relating his journey toward identifying himself as Asian American: I didn’t realize I was Asian American until I moved to Atlanta in eighth grade. Before that, I was certain I was Chinese. In San Jose, I had lots of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese friends. We
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