I grew up second-generation Italian. This means I am just removed enough from my heritage to feel like I can’t claim it without being a fraud – an uncouth Australian girl trying to assert some culture by announcing she’s Italian. But just close enough so that when, as a child, my friends heard my grandfather…
"You can’t be into surfing because you’re Asian."
Oh yes, you got me. Everything I do must actually fit your racist stereotype of what an Asian girl must do. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know me at all. That I am allowed to be, and am, into surfing. No, I’m just Asian.
Growing up…