The phrase "fresh off the boat" has been a permanent fixture of American slang for several decades, living alternatingly as a slur and a derogatory statement of fact, depending on who's tossing it and where. The one thing it has never, ever been, however, is a braggadocious badge of honor, acceptable to don in the mainstream. Until now.

For the last year, Taiwanese-Chinese-American writer and restaurateur Eddie Huang has been crusading to reclaim it.

In 2013, Huang published a memoir about being the child of Taiwanese parents while growing up in the United States during the '90s. It was called Fresh Off the Boat. Shortly after that, he began hosting an online travelogue series on VICE.com, under the same audacious title. Now, a year later, a period comedy based on Huang's memoir — specifically his life as a 12-year-old who moved from Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown to a lily-white Orlando suburb — has been picked up by ABC for the network's 2014–2015 lineup. Huang will serve as a producer on the show, also of the same name. In a ballsy cultural subversion, the words "fresh off the boat" are voluntarily entering the most mainstream space in the United States.

Huang, who was born in D.C. and has lived in the United States for his entire life, has never actually been "fresh off the boat," as per its conventional definition. But Huang has neither time for, nor interest in, conventional definitions.

"I would never call myself an American," he told BuzzFeed via phone just a day after the Fresh Off the Boat trailer hit YouTube. "I'm a Taiwanese-Chinese-American. My parents came here in the late '70s and had me about three years after they'd lived in this country. So I consider myself fresh. You can't tell me to not consider myself something."