American Like Me by America Ferrera

Author:America Ferrera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books

A Palo Alto native, Jeremy Lin is a guard for the Brooklyn Nets and is the NBA’s first American-born player of Chinese or Taiwanese descent. He became an overnight sensation in 2012 for his performance with the Knicks, commonly known as “Linsanity.” Lin has played with the Warriors, Knicks, Rockets, Lakers, and Hornets, and most recently signed with the Nets as a free agent in 2016.

Jeremy Lin

WHERE I GREW UP, in the main part of Palo Alto, California, the population was predominantly white. So before Steven showed up, our basketball team had been a bunch of white kids and me. Thanks to Steven, I was no longer alone.

East Palo Alto didn’t have a YMCA, so Steven always came to our Y to play basketball. When he walked into the gym on that first day, I was in awe of his height. I was nowhere near as tall as he was—and still am not to this day. I spent my entire childhood trying to get taller. I was a little intimidated by Steven, but together, we killed it on that court. It was unfair to all the other third graders in the Palo Alto Y rec league that Steven and I were on the same team. We destroyed everyone else.

Steven was the first black kid I ever played basketball with, which was weird to me since I saw so few white NBA players on TV. In my house, we only paid for cable TV during the few weeks of the NBA playoffs to watch Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. My parents are immigrants from Taiwan. Both of them worked as engineers to make a comfortable life for me and my two brothers, but we didn’t have a lot of extra money for cable after they paid for our basketball gear, all the food I ate trying to get taller, and piano lessons (yeah, you read that right).

Even though my parents made me do things like practice piano and put school before athletics, they always supported my passion for basketball. Not every Asian parent will do this. My mom had high standards for us, but she always encouraged us to do what we loved. She would even sometimes watch NBA games with all her boys. I used to turn on the TV in my living room and watch the games through the window outside while trying to copy Jordan’s moves.

Before I met Steven, most of my friends were white or Asian. Steven and I weren’t exactly friends at first. We were solid teammates for sure, but we went to different schools and lived on different sides of town. Yet the more we played ball together, the tighter we became. And by high school, when we finally attended the same school, we were bros and took our team all the way to the state championship. We became the only two players from our team to go on to play in college.

It took me a long time to get there. I had a chip on my shoulder from day one.

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