Andrew Yang opens up about his awkward high-school years and the 'escape hatches' he used to distract himself from not fitting in

Anthony Fisher/Insider

• Andrew Yang recently spoke with Insider about his lonely high school years. 
• "Growing up in my town, I was one of the only Asian kids and I'd skipped a grade," Yang recalls. "And I did get called 'chink' and 'gook' a fair amount. So I wound up getting into fights that I would lose." 
• Things got a little better for the teenaged Yang after transferring to an elite boarding school in New Hampshire, but he still felt like an outsider. 
• He got by with teenage pop culture "escape hatches" — music, video games, and comic books. 
• Now he's a successful entrepreneur, family man, and presidential contender who won the endorsement Rivers Cuomo, the Weezer frontman who wrote anthems about surviving teenage loneliness.
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Andrew Yang, the 2020 Democratic hopeful running a surprisingly successful outsider campaign based on giving every adult in the US a monthly basic income of $1,000, recently spoke with Insider about his lonely high school years. 

Yang was raised in the suburbs outside New York City, where he says he faced physical bullying and racist harassment. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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