Quote 4
Rich was smiling. "How long does it take to say, Mom, Dad, I’m getting married?"
"You don’t understand. You don’t understand my mother." Rich shook his head. "Whew! You can say that again. Her English was so bad. You know, when she was talking about that dead guy showing up on Dynasty, I thought she was talking about something that happened in China a long time ago." (III.2.111)
Rich doesn’t understand Waverly and Lindo’s communication style from a cultural standpoint, nor does he understand Lindo’s English. Also, is it just us, or is Rich rude? It’s hard to learn a second language. He shouldn’t just go around criticizing Lindo’s English!
Quote 5
At the corner of the alley was Hong Sing’s, a four-table café with a recessed stairwell in front that led to a door marked "Tradesmen." My brothers and I believed the bad people emerged from this door at night. Tourists never went to Hong Sing’s, since the menu was printed only in Chinese. A Caucasian man with a big camera once posed me and my playmates in front of the restaurant. He had us move to the side of the picture window so the photo would capture the roasted duck with its head dangling from a juice-covered rope. After he took the picture, I told him he should go into Hong Sing’s and eat dinner. When he smiled and asked me what they served, I shouted, "Guts and duck’s feet and octopus gizzards!" Then I ran off with my friends. (II.1.8)
Hong Sing’s is an aspect of Chinatown that exists outside the purview of white America, and as "American" as Waverly is, she still belongs to the world of Chinatown – a world that a white man finds exotic enough to capture on film.
Quote 6
The sexual chemistry was what really surprised me, though. I thought he’d be one of those quiet types who was awkwardly gentle and clumsy, the kind of mild-mannered guy who says, "Am I hurting you?" when I can’t feel a thing. But he was so attuned to my every movement I was sure he was reading my mind. He had no inhibitions, and whatever ones he discovered I had he’d pry away from me like little treasures. He saw all those private aspects of me – and I mean not just my sexual private parts, but my darker side, my meanness, my pettiness, my self-loathing – all the things I kept hidden. So that with him I was completely naked, and when I was feeling the most vulnerable – when the wrong word would have sent me flying out the door forever – he always said the right thing at the right moment. (III.2.78)
Rich has KEEPER written all over him. And, the most important thing about Rich isn’t their sexual chemistry in a physical sense (Waverly had that with her first husband too), but their ability have emotional openness in their sexual relationship.