
In stories, there are no small stakes, only improper scaling. Even a nuclear war looks like small potatoes next to a supernova. On any given day, very few people will save lives or win a war. Yet people will still be deeply invested in the small outcomes between the time they wake and sleep. They don’t need dragon battles to care about things.
There is also a pervasive sense of rootlessness that Asian American men feel as well. It’s no coincidence that so many Asian American guys, myself included, experience revelations after spending significant time in Asia, where our race/gender is no longer unjustly treated as a liability. Yet this discovery is bittersweet because it reaffirms that we are indeed Perpetual Foreigners who have to leave home and go to the other side of the world to find a greater sense of belonging. We realize the truth that t…