Summary

Part 3: Jade - Tell It Slant is told in the first person voice of an unnamed narrator. The story is presented as a monologue of sorts, and the narrator frequently addresses the reader. The section opens with the quote, "There was funky Billie Chin and little Sammy Chong..." from "Kung Fu Fighting" by the singer Carl Douglas.

The events of the story are anchored in the historic 1982 murder of twenty-seven year-old Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man who was beaten into a coma by a worker of the nearby Chrysler plant in a Detroit suburb and his stepson. The narrator situates his story as having taken place nearly three decades later, meaning his present day is between 2002 and 2012. He fully expects the reader to not be familiar with the crime, or if so, only in passing. Throughout...