Excerpt from Tao Lin Interview

Tao Lin is supposed to be the next break-out act in the lit. world, I can't reliably confirm. He's got two books coming out this month and I happened to chance upon an interview:

Q - Gene Yuen Lang, who grew up in San Francisco, makes it look very terrifying. He represents all of the Asian stereotypes with a grotesque named "Chin-Kee" who eats cats. The book won the Printz Award for Young Adult Literature in 2006. However, he grew up in the late 1970s.

Maybe the racism is worse there. I'm not sure. I went to NYU. There were a lot of Asian clubs. Whenever some place portrayed Asians as eating rice, holding chopsticks, having slanty eyes, or anything like that the Asian club would have boycotts against whoever had done that. But the Asian club called itself the Asian club. An Asian who is "proud" of his or her heritage is racist. Stereotypes are strange. An Asian in a group of Asians at an Asian club can joke about being Asians being computer experts, or something, but if a white person does it the Asian club becomes very angry. I feel interminable thinking about this. I feel interminable thinking about existential issues also, like limited-time, death, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the demands of genetics vs. the demands of society, philosophy, and consciousness, etc. I don't know. I try not to use the word "Asian" ever unless sarcastically. If I say, "Look at that German," I say it kind-heartedly and sarcastically. I know that 98% of all human beings think in preconceptions, cliches, and not factually. I don't think French people are “smarter” than Americans or whatever. I try to view each person specifically, and only their concrete attributes. Someone saying, “I'm French,” is meaningless to me. Ideally it's meaningless to me.