“Where are you from?”

I turn to the man at the bus station. Wearing mismatched army pants and an African Kufi hat, he looks like some of the other lost souls that usually try to talk to me.

I sigh, and decide to be difficult.

“I’m from San Francisco,” I tell him, smiling innocently.

“Oh,” he says, but doesn’t give up. “But what is your heritage?”

“Oh you mean, what is my ethnicity? My mother is Brazilian, my dad is white American.”

“Brasileria, huh? Bailas samba?”

The man then starts on the usual spiel about how he thinks Brazilian women are so sexy and I have beautiful eyes. I begin to tune him out. I decide it’s not worth giving him a speech about the exotification of ...