Yo: I’m giving away 2 copies of TWENTY-SOMEWHERE on That Hapa Chick’s blog as part of the “All Things Asian” celebration. It’s an honor to join in the festivities, and the interview was a lot of fun. It includes 2 pictures of me as a kid, with bonus embarrassing hat!

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Andy and I spent this past weekend back in Pittsburgh. It’s where we went to college, where we met, where we fell in love. The city is a beautiful mix of brick, metal, and glass — of old and new — of buildings short and tall, all standing shoulder to shoulder, dotting the hillsides. Nearly a dozen bridges lace back and forth across the river, and on a clear night, the downtown lights shine like fireflies.

(Unfortunately I didn’t get any good pictures of the skyline, so you’ll have to take my word on all this.)

It was nice to visit again, after so many years. But also weird. The trip stirred up a lot of feelings and memories, both good and not-so. I’m not even sure how to put it all into words… so for now, I’ll use photos and focus on the good.

The food — Pamela’s, Primanti Bros, Fuel & Fuddle, Coca Cafe

The fun — Penguins playoff game, the Toonseum

The fabulous — two of my dearest friends getting married to each other

One tree in the front yard, or two? Wood siding, or brick? Have I ever even set foot in the backyard?

These questions roll through my mind during the drive to Dallas. It’s been over 10 years since I last visited my aunt’s house, but 4 short hours later, here we are. The front walk is like memory lane, leading me to answers I didn’t realize I had forgotten.

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I’m 7 years old, sitting at the dining table, legs tucked underneath me. I hold out one finger, my body tensed in fear of being bitten. Inside a brass cage, yellow and blue feathers rustle, punctuated by twin chirps. My aunt opens a little door and slips her hand in. Next thing I know, tiny claws are dancing across my pointer finger. I relax and smile.

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I’m 9 years old, playing Hearts on my laptop. My cousin, older and wiser, leans over and shoulders me out of the way. “Have you heard of an mp3?” he asks. As I shake my head, he is already typing and clicking and downloading a few things from his server at MIT. “It’s the future of music,” he assures me. Soon we are listening to some song called “Sweetest Thing” by some band called U2 on some program called Winamp. Impressed, I nod to the beat and try to sing along with the chorus.

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I’m 10 years old, knocking tentatively on my cousin’s bedroom door. He doesn’t say to come in, but he doesn’t say to go away either. I close the door softly behind me. He’s sitting on the bed, face red with anger, eyes wet with tears. I sit down on the floor in front of him, but he just keeps staring hard at the opposite wall.

After several minutes of silence, I ask if he wants to play Connect Four. He still doesn’t say anything, but he scoots off the bed and slides the board game out. We’re dropping our red and black checkers into place when his father comes in to apologize. But he never actually says he’s sorry. He just holds his arms out and waits. They hug silently, my cousin’s small body stiff, my uncle’s hand heavy on his back.

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I’m 12 years old, up late for no real reason. While the rest of the house sleeps peacefully, my typing fills the darkness. A childhood friend is teasing me over chat, but I feel something else coming. Something exciting and frightening.

Oh god, there it is. But what do I do now? What do I do with those three little words? I want them — of course I want them — but not from him, not right now.

Joy, regret, and panic churn inside me. With tears in my eyes, I type, “I’m sorry.” I hit send. I sign off.

I don’t sleep that night.

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I’m 26 years old, sharing a mattress with my mother. In the morning we wake to soft light filtering in through the windows. Still half-asleep, we stay in bed, lying on our backs and talking. Catching up, sharing stories.

Memories layer one on top of the other, new on top of old, hers on top of mine. It’s been over 10 years since I last visited my aunt’s house, but pieces of me linger, hanging on the walls next to the photographs. I collect them now, questions and answers no longer forgotten.

One tree. Brick. Still not sure.

Back in 2007, when Andy and I went on our very first trip together, my mom said it would be a good test for us. That you learn a lot about your compatibility with someone when you travel with them.

Five years later, at a chic Italian bistro in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, Andy says out of nowhere, “I think my favorite thing in the world is traveling with you.”

 Classic San Fran icons.

I’m obsessed with jellies.

Typical SF houses in the Mission District. (I felt like I was in Lola and the Boy Next Door!)

Andy realizing that 300-400 ft. trees are really, really tall.

I could not stop thinking about the boats commercial from HIMYM…

(This post isn’t THAT long, but if it’s looking “tl;dr” for you, here’s the bottom line: I don’t think every racial joke is a slur, and I think treating them as such may do more harm than good. Seeing racism where there is none means it will never go away.)

(Also, I have other thoughts on #Linsanity that I hope to write about later. This particular angle was just at the forefront yesterday.)

As someone of Asian descent, someone who has always grappled with my identity in regards to race, I’m fairly sensitive to Asian American issues. So yes, my ears perked up when I started hearing about Jeremy Lin, this underdog Taiwanese American basketball player who went to Harvard, who might never have gotten a chance in the NBA, and who is now taking the sports world by storm.

I’m fully on board for #Linsanity. I’m so glad that Asian Americans can see someone like them succeeding in such an unexpected and prominent arena. (Yao was a start, but he always sort of felt “on loan” from China.) I think back on the guys who used to sweat through their shirts playing basketball during lunch at Chinese school, who watched NBA games when they should have been studying for calculus or biology, and I smile.

But it’s not all rainbows and bunnies. It’s not all celebration and progress. Behind the silly puns (Linsanity, Lincredible, etc.) the dark cloud of racism looms overhead. Or at least the dark cloud of racial insensitivity.

• Saturday Night Live’s spoof of a sports talk show demonstrates an unfortunate double standard: Chicken fried rice? Okay. Fried chicken? No way!

• The LA Times explains why the borderline racism in Lin jokes is so important: it shows us how far we still have go to. (“We” being both non-Asian America, and Asians in America.)

Part of what spurred both of those commentaries was a headline that appeared on ESPN’s mobile website (at 2:30 a.m. for a mere 35 minutes): “Chink in the Armor.” When I heard about that headline, I felt… unsettled. “Chink” is a derogatory term, but like the n-word, many Asians have reclaimed “chink” and use it when talking to each other, under the theory that a word is just a word and it’s our intentions that make them “good” or “bad.” Personally I didn’t find the headline cute or clever, but I wasn’t pissed off about it either. It just seemed tasteless.

Now, after hearing more about why and how it got there, I believe it was an honest, unfortunate coincidence. As I said to a friend on Twitter, I’ve made bigger mistakes than that under much better conditions. (Like the time in high school, as editor-in-chief of our paper, I let the placeholder copy “Headline headline headline” go all the way to print.) Sportscasters toss around lame, canned phrases like that all the time. Does that make this incident okay? Of course not. But did the guy deserve to lose his job and possibly his career over it? In my opinion, no.

(Reprimanded? Made to apologize? Educated? Yes yes yes.)

What if I blogged that an Indian author was trying to “curry favor” with a reviewer by sending them gifts? Would that make me a racist? Or maybe just a moron?

What if someone pointed out the potential offense in what I wrote, and I immediately took it down? What if I apologized for my mistake? Would you stop reading my blog? Stop being my friend?

What about the other night, when I DID tweet “Jeremy Lin + MSG = recipe for success”? Was that joke out of line? Did I make a racial slur? Or was I just having a bit of fun?

I believe that truly hateful and/or derogatory remarks MUST be acted upon. No question. But there’s a fine line between joke and slur, between enforcing political correct-ness and promoting censorship. We HAVE to consider that line. We can’t paint everyone with same brush. (“If you say anything less-than-flattering about his being Asian, then you’re racist.”) Because if we do that, then we’re just as bad as them.

I have been on the receiving end of ugly racist remarks. I’ve also been on the receiving end of racially based “compliments.” I’ve grown up surrounded by intelligent, hard-working men and women who were looked down upon, not taken seriously, discriminated against, just because of their accents, their grammar, their eyes, their height, their clothes. I know racism, and I hate it with a passion.

But I also grew up in an extremely diverse community, with friends from ALL cultures and ALL walks of life. (People used to tell me that my group of friends could have been a United Color of Benetton ad.) I know that race doesn’t have to be divisive. I know that there can be humor in our differences.

And I know that people make mistakes. They say things without thinking, or they say things they don’t mean. I don’t believe it does any good to persecute these people. I think that only reinforces the notion that race is a scary, dangerous thing, when the reality is that culture and ethnicity are wonderful, rich parts of history and humanity that should be understood, explored, and celebrated.

I’ll say it again: this country — this whole world — has a long way to go in battling racism. So let’s do that, let’s really battle real racism. Instead of kicking a man to the curb, let’s hold out our hand and help him cross to the side of cultural sensitivity. Instead of bowing to the pressure of outraged voices, let’s meet their call to action. In this case that might mean hosting sports camps for Asian youths, or creating scholarships for Asian American athletes. Whatever we do, we need to be curing the disease, not putting bandaids on the cuts and bruises. Because covering up an illness only gives it the opportunity to grow stronger while you’re not looking.