Tell me about yourself: Where are you from? What is your job? etc. I am a second generation Chinese-American. To me, growing up was quite a bit of a challenge both externally and internally: being the minority, the cultural differences, the social identity… Ultimately, I was trying very hard to figure out just where I fit in the world. What I did know was that I wanted to be somebody. I wanted to do something special. I wanted to rise up on top and prove to people that I wasn’t just the girl next door, and I didn’t need anybody’s help doing it. So, I was very independent from a young age and I just had all these dreams and ideas that I was going to do it all on my own. Fast forward a number of years later, I am now the Associate Director of Budget and Operations for Columbia University. That is my main role during the day. I just finished my Ph.D. in business psychology as well, and I am also working on a startup with a partner. The startup is for a cloud-based application that will be used by small restaurants and cafe management. I also manage properties as a solo side-hustle. I own multiple properties and I manage the tenants for those properties. So with everything that I’m doing, I am trying to put all of that in my book. You are working on so many different projects at the same time. How do you manage your time? I will be very honest and tell you that I cannot do everything by myself. Yes, I’m wearing multiple hats, but I also acknowledge that I can’t be a one-woman army. I need help and I need support. For example, for the startup, I have a partner that I work with and I do the business aspects of things such as building up the internal interfaces and the system structures whilst he focuses more on the technical aspects, the actual software engineering side of things. There’s also a lot of time management, self discipline, but at the same time, it’s really acknowledging that you need help building the team as well. Tell me about "Asian Duckling." Who are the characters? What is the premise? Why did you decide to write this? What are some of your inspirations? With this book that I’m working on, it’s a story about my experiences, all the challenges that I have gone through and how I thought I was alone in the world. I have a partner who uses her magic wand and takes all that and puts it into creative writing. Essentially, it started off as a reflection on my own experiences. Growing up, I went through a lot of those identity crises and social dilemmas. At that time, I didn’t know what I was going through, but now as an adult and with my background in psychology I can identify those themes a lot more. I wanted to create that awareness for the next person that is growing up and going through what I went through. Growing up, I didn’t have a support system. I’m Chinese ethnically and culturally; we don’t really have that type of support background. So I’m trying to create that platform so that the next person who’s going through these challenges will realize that he or she is not alone in this world. The challenges that they’re going through are not unique to them. I think that was really the main reason why I wanted to capture all this in a book, the story itself is a way to outline this. I wish my partner was with me because she would be really great at telling this, but I’m trying to find the balance where I can share but not give too much of the book away. It’s basically about this young Asian-American woman who is in a mid-management position, and she’s encountering challenges at work. Those challenges remind her of past incidents and those life lessons that she learned. Those incidents are actually based on my own personal experiences. When will it be published? It’s still a work in progress. Originally, we were planning to have this published probably towards the end of this year. However, with the pandemic, that kind of threw a wrench in everyone’s plans. Hopefully, we will be able to pick up traction again. We’re now aiming for mid next year. I’m really hoping that there are no further delays. But, I don’t want to give you any promises. I would hate to really disappoint. Keep following my Facebook page, I try to update as much as I can, and keep progress updates as we move along. Who do you hope your book reaches? Who is your target audience? I would say it’s more for whoever is feeling lost. Those that are really feeling lost whether you’re born here, or you came here when you were young, or even if you just came here recently, and you’re struggling to find where you fit in that world. I’m trying not to set a specific target, but it’s more of a general kind of conceptual idea. What would you like to see in the Asian community moving forward? I feel like we’re already starting to move towards it, especially with the recent protests that have been going on which we’ve kind of branched off of a little bit. But, I’ve seen the Asian communities starting to empower themselves to be a little bit more vocal and expressive and advocate for themselves. That is so amazing compared to me growing up and the resources that were available. I’m really happy to see that we’re starting to do this. I would love to see us advance further and also further empower ourselves. When I was doing my doctoral research, I came across the idea that yes there are external factors like a glass ceiling, but at the same time, there are things that are within our control. Those are self-imposing factors that we can take charge of and change. What does your identity mean to you? For me, I feel that I’ve created my own version of an identity that I don’t belong in one specific place. There’s the Asian identity and there’s the American identity, but then there’s this new merged version of the two. It took me a while to get to that place where I am very proud of who I am to be able to see the pros and the faults of both cultures. Basically I pick and choose to become the person I want to be. For example, in Asian culture, we are very family-oriented. I agree with that value, so I’ll pick and choose that value. At the same time, in the American culture, we’re taught to be very independent and to stand up for ourselves. I also agree with that value. So, I have this very customized identity that is unique to myself. Honestly, I like going against the trend. I don’t like to be a follower. I like being my own individual person. What is your advice for younger Asians navigating through the world we are currently living in? I would say, don’t be afraid to be yourself. Forget what other people are saying. For example, growing up, for some odd reason, I had this love to learn Chinese. I had this passion and so I went to Chinese school and all my classmates were looking at me going, “Well, you gave up your Saturday cartoons for this? Are you serious? We were all dragged here. Why are you so weird?” If that’s your passion, be proud of it and stick to it. Now, I’m fully bilingual and I can speak, read, and write in Chinese. That’s a skill set that comes back and benefits me. So, don’t be afraid to do it. Those friends and people are not going to carry you 10-20 years later in life. So, if there’s something that you believe in, hold onto it. If anything, I would further advance it! What’s your vision/goal for the "Asian Duckling?" Interestingly enough, when you were talking about not being Asian-American but British-Asian, I was on a different podcast a few weeks back with someone from Australia. I never imagined that [the book] would get this much attention. I thought it was something that was going to be local and domestic. I’m blown beyond belief at this moment right now. I’m also wondering if I should take some of the feedback that I’ve gotten in the past and in today’s session and go back to my writing partner to see if maybe we can kind of adjust it a little bit. Maybe add in some language where it’s not just Asian-American related but more of an East meets West thing so that it’s a little bit more applicable. Right now, I’m just beyond belief at how far it’s reaching. Who are your favorite fictional “hyphenated Asian” characters? I know so many people are going to laugh as soon as I give this answer. My favorite character, which I assume is Asian because it’s an anime character, is Sailor Moon. To me, she is Asian but she was speaking English this entire time. I really loved her because of what she stood for, seeing how she stands up for justice. Although during the day she’s this clumsy, ditsy character who you can barely rely on, when you actually need her, she comes through without even caring for her own safety. My favorite character from the book—I don’t want to give away too much again—so this is just a little sneak peek: the main character has a best friend and that best friend is actually my favorite character, because she is just so spontaneous and so fun. It’s like the ying and the yang to the main character. So, the main character is this serious person who is just trying to do her job and everything she does is to the bullet. Whereas, the best friend…she’s just a good compliment to the main character. I will be sitting there and wondering, “Oh my gosh, what is she going to do next? What crazy thing is she going to just pop out?” You can also follow "Asian Duckling" on Instagram.

We saw Viv Yau popping up on social media calling for more awareness and action against the portrayal of Asians in mass media’s imagery of the Coronoavirus and had the opportunity thanks to our collaboration with Asians in Britain to learn more about this movement. Read on and get involved! Can you tell me a bit about yourself? I’m the founder of Bee Influence, an influencer marketing agency where we essentially work with clients to market their product or services using social media influencers. We’ve recently also launched a talent management programme as part of the business so we’re representing influencers. Our focus is on representing a more diverse roster. This means having as many different people from as many different backgrounds as possible, especially from marginalised communities—in particular East Asian and South-East Asian influencers because I feel that we are so underrepresented. What made you decide to become an entrepreneur? I kind of just met an investor who planted the seed in my head in terms of starting my own business. It really gave me the confidence to do that. It’s a bit weird because usually, you see other businesses go through Dragon’s Den to try to receive investments. However, I just had this opportunity right in front of me and I never really sought out the opportunity. I was extremely fortunate and I was at the right place at the right time and my investor saw something in me and the business. So, that’s how it started. What pushed you to start this campaign to stop the disproportionate depiction of East and South-East Asian depiction in the media? The reason why I started the petition was because of an Australian article in The Guardian and how they were depicting East Asians in the article related to face masks, which I thought was unfair. You see five East and Southeast Asian people in the forefront of this picture taken in Sydney (below, taken from The Guardian site), Australia. It was meant to be talking about the whole Australian population, but that photo just disproportionately represents the Australian population. People leave Flinders Street Station on 21 June. Australia updated its Covid face mask position in response to rising coronavirus cases in Melbourne, with new rules making face masks mandatory across Victoria. That wasn’t the only article that I saw because I’ve seen it enough times to feel that something needs to be done. In some instances, we’ve got the images changed because we explained to them how the images negatively affect our communities and perpetuates inaccurate stereotypes and idea that all Asians are responsible for Coronavirus in some way or are Coronavirus carriers. So, I emailed The Guardian's complaints department which went through to David Whitfield, the Assistant Readers’ Editor and we got a response very quickly. However, I was extremely disappointed with the response which you can see on my Instagram (@itsvivyau) where I’ve created detailed threads about it. Essentially to summarise his response, he denies what we were saying in terms of the imagery being discriminatory and he comes up with rebuttals by listing 10 articles and how the articles don’t show "people like you." In fact, he believes that the article that I complained about shows people like us displaying good behaviour, so we should be grateful for how they are depicting us in the media. This really sparked a lot of rage in me and that night, I started the petition on Change.org. You need to get at least five signatures in order for it to be registered on the website so I was texting everyone so sign it. I also host this podcast called "But Where Are You From?" and I have built a really nice community of East and Southeast Asian people and we all follow each other. A couple of them got in touch with me; they also felt the same. I also managed to find other people who shared the same thoughts as me. I can’t remember how we all found each other exactly, but somehow the six of us, six women, were all connected to each other. Then, one of the women suggested we start a Whatsapp group to chat about this together. It was really nice to find a group of people who feel the same way as you because it can feel quite isolating when you think that you’re the only person in the world to say something and care about this. After a week of us complaining and trying to figure out this big mess of an issue, we’ve realised that we have uncovered something that was way bigger than just one news outlet. It involves politics—worldwide politics. There are reasons why governments are dispatching and displaying these types of imagery. It’s all influenced by what’s going on in the world. We’ve also discovered issues with systemic racism in these organisations. The truth is that the top editors of these news outlets are mainly all white with rarely any people of colour, especially black people. Not only that, these images are from Getty Images. The question is how are Getty labelling these images on their website? There is this whole network of issues that we uncovered and it was extremely emotionally exhausting and draining. We’ve realised that it’s not just The Guardian. It’s our entire system that needs fixing. However, thanks to Daniel York Loh (@danielfyork), an activist, musician, artist, actor etc., he has a connection with Sarah Owen (@SarahOwen_), who is a Labour MP from Luton and is also a British East Asian. He then sent her the petition and at that time, we only had less than 3000 signatures. But, because she understands what we’ve been through, she went straight to Parliament and raised this issue with them. She basically asked the government what they are doing to tackle hate crimes towards East and South Asian people because the media are contributing to this issue at hand. Whether they chose to admit this or not, it’s not like the media is doing this in a very overt way. Initially, you might think that there’s no issue with the media just showing one East Asian person wearing a mask in a Coronavirus-related article. However, when you see it repeatedly, it’s reinforcing the idea that we are somehow connected to this and puts us on a monolithic block in terms of who we are. That’s really dangerous because it results in racial hate crimes, abuse and also hate speech. Owens raised this with Victoria Atkins, the minister for safeguarding and they have promised to meet with us and we are now waiting for this to be confirmed. Since the initial push in Parliament, we have now reached over 10,000 signatures. That is a big milestone for us and we were really keen to get it to 10,000 signatures before our meeting with Victoria Atkins in September. We’ve managed to achieve this within a month and this just shows that you don’t have to personally experience this to do something about it. However, we’re still in step one. We’ve not even managed to make any changes. We still have a lot to go when it comes to how we actually tackle all these issues. Meanwhile, whilst we’ve been petitioning, we’ve also linked up with other organisations who are also fighting against this. We’ve been working with an organisation called End the Virus of Racism who are also crowdfunding to start the first not-for-profit organisation to tackle hate crimes against East and Southeast Asian people. So, we’ve been volunteering our time to help with that as well. We just really need to tackle these issues ourselves because the government isn’t going to do it so we’re going to take it into our own hands and do something about it ourselves. Other than helping to sign the petition, what else can we do to support this movement? There is so much you can do. Carry on sharing resources on social media. If you see imagery on the news that is not related to East and Southeast Asian people where it’s about Coronavirus, but we are being used as poster children of the article, complain. It takes only two minutes to do this. We still have a lot to do, but more people are speaking up about this which does make a difference. Recently, the BBC was caught using the N-word and they racked up 19,000 complaints. Without this significant number of complaints, they wouldn’t have issued an apology. Unfortunately, it took for someone to leave the organisation for them to actually say something about it and apologise for their actions. We can all help each other. I think we all feel empowered that we can do our own bits. We can all do different things. What I’ve learnt recently is that not everyone is going to be as vocal about it as I am. People do a lot on their own privately and in their own time, almost kind of supporting the cause silently. This is something that is really valuable as well because no route is better or worse. Bee Influence: https://www.beeinfluence.co.uk/influencer-network Sign the Petition: https://www.change.org/p/bbc-stop-depicting-east-asians-in-coronavirus-related-media You can also hear more about Viv Yau’s work on the High Expectasians podcast Episode 8: COVID Ain't Real.

Please give us a brief bio. David Henry Hwang’s stage works include the plays "M. Butterfly," "Chinglish," "Yellow Face," "Kung Fu," "Golden Child," "The Dance and the Railroad," and "FOB," as well as the Broadway musicals Elton John & Tim Rice’s "Aida" (co-author), "Flower Drum Song" (2002 revival), and Disney’s "Tarzan." Hwang is a Tony Award winner and three-time nominee, a three-time OBIE Award winner, and a three-time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is also the most-produced living American opera librettist, whose works have been honored with two Grammy Awards, co-wrote the Gold Record Solo with the late pop icon Prince, and worked from 2015-2019 as a Writer/Consulting Producer for the Golden Globe-winning television series "The Affair." He is currently writing the live-action musical feature film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" for Disney Studios and a movie to star actress Gemma Chan. Hwang serves as Head of Playwriting at Columbia University School of the Arts, and as Chair of the American Theatre Wing, founder of the Tony Awards. "M. Butterfly" recently returned to Broadway in a revival directed by Julie Taymor, which marked Mr. Hwang’s eighth Broadway production. His newest work, "Soft Power," a collaboration with composer Jeanine Tesori ("Fun Home"), premiered at Los Angeles’ Ahmanson Theatre, where it won six Ovation Awards. Its subsequent run at the Public Theatre in NYC received four Outer Critics Honors, eleven Drama Desk Nominations, and was a Finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Where did life begin for you and what was your experience like growing up? I was born in Los Angeles, and grew up in the San Gabriel Valley, which today is home to one of the largest Chinese communities in America. When I was a kid, however, it was mainly a working class white and Latinx area, with only a smattering of Blacks and Asians. In fact, when my parents first tried to buy a home in this area, they were turned down because the owners wouldn’t sell to Chinese people. As an Asian-American kid during the '60s, I experienced microaggressions, but not a lot of outright racism. In retrospect, the place where I felt the most racism was watching American movies and TV. It got to the point where, if I knew a show or film had an Asian character, I would go out of my way not to watch it, since I had learned that these images would just make me feel badly. I suppose it’s therefore fitting that I’ve spent my adult life trying to create new Asian Pacific American (APA) stories and characters. How did you identify yourself growing up and how has that evolved over time? I didn’t think much about my identity growing up and just considered myself an American. I knew I was Chinese, of course, but I considered that a relatively minor detail, like having red hair. Only when I got to college and started trying to write plays, did I discover themes appearing on the page: immigration, assimilation, racism. So clearly, some part of me was incredibly interested in these questions, but it took the process of writing, and accessing my subconscious, to bring them to my attention. At that point, I started identifying as an Asian-American, which in the mid-1970s was a fairly new term. I still like the term today (or Asian Pacific Islander (API) American) because I believe it represents my reality: as a Chinese-American, I have more in common with a Laotian or Vietnamese-American than I do with a Chinese national in say Shanghai. When you were growing up what was representation like for Asian-Americans and who were your role models/elders/influences as a Chinese-American artist? I had no idea that I was going to become a playwright, or any sort of author, when I was growing up. But, as I mentioned before, I was acutely aware of the way Asians and APIs were represented in the popular media. We were so desperate in those days for any Asian character to be something other than a villain, a submissive female, or the butt of a joke. Once I got to college and began writing, I became influenced by novelist Maxine Hong Kingston, as well as artists from the emerging Asian-American arts scene in San Francisco, such as playwrights Philip Kan Gotanda, Momoko Iko, and Wakako Yamauchi. Playwright Frank Chin, the first AA dramatist to have a work staged Off-Broadway, was an inspiration too, but he quickly decided he hated me after my first play opened! The late actor/director Mako was also an important elder and a huge influence on my career. How have you observed it (representation) to have changed over the course of your life and career, and are there any “watershed” moments that you can point to in regards to how Asian-American representation has changed in the arts world specifically? In some ways, APA representation has improved considerably, but if you consider that it’s been over 50 years since I was a kid, progress has been glacially slow. From my very subjective viewpoint, here are some pop culture moments that have felt exciting and game-changing to me, sticking strictly to scripted works (and excluding my own): "Flower Drum Song," "Enter the Dragon," "Chan Is Missing," "Better Luck Tomorrow," "Joy Luck Club," "Who Killed Vincent Chin?," "Mulan," "Lilo and Stitch," "Saving Face," "Harold and Kumar...," "Fresh Off the Boat," "Crazy Rich Asians," "Killing Eve," "The Farewell." One of the purposes of TUA is to feature a wide spectrum of Asian-American voices from a variety of fields so as to increase greater representation, which has only recently been on the uprise. As the first Asian-American to win a Tony Award for your play M. Butterfly, do you have any reflections to share with our readers about what it was/is like being “the first” and what pressures and/or responsibilities you feel were placed on you or your work? The most difficult thing about being a “first” is that your work is expected to represent and speak for an entire community, ethnicity, or race of people. Obviously, this is impossible, since any group is necessarily diverse and encompasses a wide range of opinions and experiences. Understandably, some of the harshest criticisms come from your own community: those who don’t see themselves represented in your work and therefore accuse you of selling out. For instance, when my first play, "FOB," was produced Off-Broadway, a San Francisco Asian-American periodical claimed I had “set Asian America back twenty years.” And I was only 22 at the time! The only solution is a broader range of Asian-American stories, so that each person can find works which speak to them, among the inevitable pieces which do not. What do you believe are some of the most damaging stereotypes that exist in the arts world about Asian-Americans and how do you believe them to impact opportunities for today’s up and coming Asian-American theatre artists and playwrights? The most damaging stereotype from producers and casting agents is that they can’t find enough APA actors. Given how star-driven, even the theatre is today, this necessarily leads to companies avoiding works by APA playwrights. This stereotype only serves to illustrate the industry’s laziness. Every time I have written a challenging role for an APA character, I have been able to find an actor who has excelled in the role, and even launched some who became stars. What are some of the obstacles you yourself have faced and how have you dealt with them? I have been very fortunate to have been championed by some forward-thinking producers and critics, including Joseph Papp, Frank Rich, Rocco Landesman, and Stuart Ostrow. That said, the theatre industry can certainly be racist, and I’ve had to overcome that. When "FOB" was presented at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, I overheard the white sound designer ask, “So what are we going to use for this one? Chink music?” When "M. Butterfly" premiered in Washington, D.C. for its out-of-town tryout, one reviewer wrote, “If David Henry Hwang hates America so much, maybe his father should have stayed in China.” In the early '90s, when I was part of a protest against the yellow face casting of Jonathan Pryce in "Miss Saigon," every major theatre in America—with the notable exception of Joe Papp and the Public—came out against us. I guess I learned to take overcoming these obstacles as a badge of pride, and that it’s always better to speak out against racist behavior than to accommodate it. Is there a particular point in time in which you look back on as being the period in which you became engaged in your identity? If so, who or what were the influencing factors and why? As I mentioned above, I discovered myself as a playwright and an Asian-American pretty much simultaneously by learning (from teachers like playwrights Sam Shepard and Maria Irene Fornes) to access my subconscious through my writing. How would you say, if at all, that your sense of identity has influenced your art? I think my exploration of identity has been at the center of my art. What do you want people to take away from your body of works? I hope people come to feel that APA stories and characters can embody all aspects of what it means to be human, just as I was raised to believe white characters can. In the current climate of Black Lives Matter, what do you believe are the responsibilities that we, as Asian-Americans and members of the diaspora, have in dismantling anti-Blackness in our communities and showing up as vocal allies both as individuals and in the arts world? I found my identity during an era when “Third World Solidarity” was the principle around which we organized our politics and our art. As APAs, our interests and stories absolutely align more closely with our Black, Latinx and Indigenous colleagues than with white supremacy, a fact I believe Asians have forgotten over the past couple of decades. I hope we use this moment to rediscover that ideal, particularly since the failure of “model minority-ism” has become glaringly obvious with the current explosion of anti-Asian COVID-19-related hate. That said, I believe this current moment also needs to foreground this country’s anti-Blackness and violence against Black bodies. Along those lines, it’s important for APAs to remember and be inspired by the long history of Black-Asian solidarity, political protest, and activism, which predates the more recent model minority period. I would like to see more stories about activists like Yuri Kochiyama, who was a comrade of Malcom X and held him as he lay dying. In fact, maybe I’ll write that play myself! And finally, what would your takeaway be, then, for younger, aspiring universal Asians and how important do you believe it to be for an individual to be engaged in their cultural and racial identity and why or why not? I think being engaged in one’s identity is simply part of what it means to be human. Cultural and racial identity is one critical aspect of that search, and it will mean more to some than others. But, to ignore it completely is to give in to the lie that universality means cutting off a part of yourself and your history. The more specific our explorations, the more universal we will become. Cover photo credit: Gregory Costanza

Amy Phung, a British-born Chinese campaigner talked with Xindi Wei of The Universal Asian about how she co-founded an ESEA grassroots movement tackling hate crimes during the pandemic. “If you define an activist as someone who cares about people, who is vocal, and is working on a social injustice campaign, then here I am,” said Amy Phung from her flat in South London. It’s been nearly a year since Phung co-founded Besea.n—a U.K. community network that champions East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) voices. “It’s actually very hard work. It’s mentally draining because constantly every day you’re thinking about the social injustices of the world, such as racism, which is very sad.” We met over Zoom, where the campaigner and graphic designer recalled how her network has come together during the pandemic. “I had anxiety when the pandemic first started last year. Mainstream media, even the ones that are neutral and well-received were using words like ‘China Virus,’ and I could see a pervasive sort of xenophobic messaging, which could potentially influence unconscious biases,” said Phung. “When I talked to my white friends about the possibility that I could be racially attacked—I found that there was a lack of understanding, and there seemed to be no empathy or thoughts going towards sympathising with my situation.” Phung paused slightly as she recounted her frustration and worry around that time. She explained that she wrote to newspapers and complained about the issue, but the feedback she received was very invalidating as they denied that their image choices were influenced by racist attitudes, even though there was a disproportionate use of ESEA faces in their COVID reporting. However, by chance, Phung found some people on social media who shared her indignation and causes. The six of them, all British-born Asians, thus came together because of a shared trauma and for a common goal: to show the diversity, vibrancy, and history of the ESEA community, as they believed that there is a missing part of media representation and a lack of education around who ESEA people are. “It was great to meet people who can validate how I’m feeling,” Phung continued. “We know that as ESEA people, people will notice us if we are seen in any public platform because we are very invisible. So, it is quite a big deal when we do get seen. But unfortunately, when we do get visibility, it is in a negative light. “For many decades we have been less able to organise and connect, because we are so spread out across the country. And, so, being able to find that community online, especially during the pandemic, is a way in which we can connect with people.” Growing up in Clapham, London in a Chinese family, Phung shared she has definitely experienced racism and discrimination, but on a very subtle level. She explained: “I never had people constantly shouting at or harassing me, but I certainly have experienced people pulling their eyes back, and people ‘othering’ me like saying ‘Where are you from?’ It’s generally very ignorant things, and that is from strangers and also people who I grew up with and called my friends.” However, she has experienced more direct instances of racism since March of last year. “I was walking in the park with my daughter and someone actually shouted at me and told me to stay away from him. And you know that was a very overt case of racism. I’ve had someone spit at me on the bus as well during the pandemic,” she said. “We could all sense that hate crimes were going to happen inevitably. The history of anti-ESEA racism in the U.K. is not a new one; you can’t say that the first time that ESEA people have been abused is in the pandemic. It is historical. It is just not talked about.” Because of escalating racism towards ESEA people, Phung and her other co-founders created a petition in July to ask the media to stop using ESEA faces in COVID reporting, catching the attention of Sarah Owen, the MP for Luton North. She took the petition to the government, which led to the first parliamentary debate—fighting anti-ESEA racism. “It was a very seminal one because it was the first one ever,” Phung smiled. “It was able to give voice to our causes, and to get people to recognise that racism does in fact impact people of colour, of ESEA origin.” From that point on, Phung’s campaign really started snowballing. They advocated for more people to write to their MPs, supporting Sarah Owen in that debate; made a podcast where guests can talk about their experiences; and they host talks and workshops for various institutions, helping people to gain advocacy skills to be able to use their voice. Phung went on to say: “We’re going to do a workshop about finding [our] collective voice, and that is for the U.K.-based charity China Exchange in Chinatown. We also have another ongoing project where we are hoping to hold active bystander training workshops, which is showing people how they can be a good active bystander if they see a hate incident happening, and what they can do to help the victim and to deescalate.” In addition to organising a non-profit charity, Phung is also an artist whose artworks echo her anti-ESEA racism sentiment, as well as her heritage. She uses her art to tell her personal relationship with ESEA food and to celebrate it. “My art has come from feeling more galvanised in recent months campaigning anti-ESEA racism to express my heritage and to educate on my experience as someone who is British-born Chinese,” she said. “I found that ESEA food was often seen as unhealthy or unhygienic, consequently causing many chefs to culturally appropriate our cuisines and ‘elevate’ them by using language such as ‘clean’ and ‘MSG-free’ in order to paint ESEA food as unhealthy.” “When we understand that historically and in current-day attitudes, ESEA people have been painted as dirty and ‘virus-carriers,’ we can understand why it can lead to anti-ESEA racism and harassment.” When I asked Phung if she thinks her campaigns do help change systemic racism towards ESEA people, she answered with a firm “yes.” But, not because institutional racism is lightly embedded into the fabric of this country, nor does she think it will disappear in her lifetime—but she does have hope that things will change one step at a time. “I can’t look in the future and say racism will be indefinitely eradicated. But without hope there is no fight. How can we serve future generations if we don’t speak out against racism? So, I think it’s important to understand that we still have to do it because historically they have been activists and we need to take their wisdom and continue that work forward.” Besea.n is now planning a nationwide movement to establish the U.K.’s first ESEA heritage month. They want to get the government to recognise it as a national observance because there is Black History Month, South Asian History Month, and so on, but not an ESEA Heritage Month. “Even if they don’t, we will still be holding it because the power is in our hands,” she stated. “We aren’t just facilitating it and we want people in the community to feel like they can take it into their own hands to set something up within the month of September to celebrate our history, to encourage education around us. This is really a community project.” Indeed, people are so much more connected these days. In the long-term, Phung and her team aim to form coalitions with many social and environmental injustices and campaigns. They want to not only support BLM but also to fight against Islamophobia, transphobia, and so on. “I don’t think we can do this on our own. We have to understand the struggles of the many different communities and find a way of working together,” she said. Ultimately, according to Phung: “We’re all fighting towards the same thing, which is dismantling the white superiority complex. It can be upheld by white people. It can be upheld by people of color and we all need to work together.” Follow Besea.n on Instagram @besea.n or go to besean.co.uk

We first came across Juliana Sohn’s name through an announcement for the release of the second season of the podcast "K-Pod" that she co-hosts with Catherine Hong. Through Episode 11, we get to know the hosts a bit more, but The Universal Asian was given the opportunity to delve even further into Juliana’s journey of initially rejecting her roots and later redefining her identity as it merged with her calling as a photographer and artist. Could you tell us a bit more about your background? I was born in Korea and we moved to the States when I was five. I remember bits and pieces of what it was like living in Korea. We lived in pretty extreme poverty though I don’t know if I realized it at all when I was there. We raised pigs and I think my grandma sold them for food. We had just a hole in the ground for a toilet. When we immigrated to the States, I remember seeing flushable toilets for the first time at the JFK airport. Since my uncle, who was a priest, got stationed in a church in New Jersey that was where we moved. Do you remember trying to learn English? I do remember because I was five. I remember my uncle teaching me how to read a "Dick and Jane" book. I don’t remember actually learning the alphabet and sounding out the letters, but I think it was almost like sight-reading and I just had to memorize it. For the first year that we were living in the States, we stayed at home because I think we must have moved in the middle of the school year. We just tried to pick up as much English as possible. We had a black and white TV set and tried to pick up what words we could. I remember going to the first day of kindergarten and not actually understanding anything they were saying. I would just look around and follow directions from watching what the other kids did. At some point, I started to understand what they were saying and realized they didn’t know that I understood. It was an interesting transition. Were there a lot of other Asians or Koreans in your school? No, we went to Catholic school. We moved around to other communities, but there were no other Asians in the school. When we first arrived, the kids didn’t really know how to act or treat us. I don’t think anyone was intentionally cold and there was no overt racism. People would say things, because they just didn’t understand us. There was a lot of goodwill, though still we felt pretty alienated. So, as you were growing up, did you identify with being Korean-American? The whole question about identity is really interesting, and is at the heart of a lot of people’s journeys of trying to figure out who they are. When I was younger, I just wanted to fit in. Since we went to Catholic school we went by our Christian names. So, when we came here [the U.S.], we went by our baptism names. As lovely as the name Juliana is, growing up in the '70s, it was too different. So, I made everyone call me Julie during high school. After trying to and wanting to fit in and experience a certain kind of American life—a very typical one—I think it wasn’t until I went to art school that I really understood I could be my own person. I could be a creative person. I could be myself. That’s when I reverted back to being called Juliana. But, even then, I was trying to find myself as an artist and trying to figure out what my voice was creatively. I was trying to assert myself as a feminist and fighting for women’s rights. I never really wanted to be identified first as a Korean or a Korean artist because it felt very niche and kind of inferior. I never wanted to be the token female artist nor the token Asian. I just wanted to be Juliana—whatever all that encompassed and what I hoped for as a unique individual. I never really saw my primary identity as Korean. I associated that with my parents’ generation that included conservative values, a patriarchal system, and all those things that went against the things I grew to believe in and were important to me. Korea has gone through such a huge change since the mid-'70s when we immigrated. I think for my parents’ generation they had this arrested development of these values based on what they knew at the time. So, while Korea may have been developing and evolving, I feel like my parents’ very core, conservative, traditional Korean values were arrested in development and we grew up under those values. So, even though people think, “Oh, you’re so American, you don’t have an accent, you’re so white,” we grew up in a very traditional [Korean] household. Even though I am very respectful to my parents and we have a great relationship, living under that system wasn’t something I wanted for myself. It was only after college when I spent all my time focusing on my work—my creative and professional work and the work I put out there—that I started to think about identity and how that defined me. Still, I didn’t make space for “Korean” as part of my identity. So, it is really late in life that I have come to embrace the Korean-American aspect of my identity. In the "K-Pod" podcast Episode 11, Catherine mentioned about being uncomfortable around other Asians or groups with Asians. Did you feel that as well? Oh yeah, definitely. When we were younger, there was a Youth Group after the kids’ mass and all the kids and teens would hang out waiting for the adult mass to finish. My sisters and I would just huddle together because we didn’t identify with the other Korean kids, the things they were interested in, or talked about. We just didn’t share a commonality. When I got older, if I was in a room and there were other Asian people at a party, I didn’t want to be associated with them. I didn’t want people to think, “Oh, you guys are Asian; you must be friends.” Instead, almost as a prophylactic to that kind of wrong association, I think I took it out on the other Asian person(s) in the room. I would kind of distance myself, and it was like I blamed them for being there, for putting me in that awkward position of having people think that we were related or would become friends. In retrospect, I was taking the microaggressions I experienced from white people out on other Asians. But, after I started to get to know people on a more intimate level, thanks to Korean American Story, I realized that there are pockets of people like me out there, who are more creatively-minded. As you moved into photography professionally, being Asian and female, did you feel that it held you back in any way or that you were looked at differently? When I was starting out, photographers wanted to be thought of on a certain level and not be associated with doing grunt work. Being a 5’ 3” woman, I definitely didn’t get many jobs because they wanted a strong guy. So, if you had a petite young Asian woman doing the lights, you were going to look like a jerk if you didn’t want to help. Many didn’t want to do that because they wanted to hang out, so oftentimes I didn’t get hired because of how it would make them look. Despite all that, then, what motivated you to keep pursuing photography? You know, it’s funny when you asked me that question, I was thinking, “What are you talking about? What else would I do?” I went to college and got a degree in photography. There was a point where I thought: “What if I can’t do this?” I don’t think that there was anything else that I felt was so right about as much as I felt that photography was right for me. It’s being able to see things in a certain way; not only seeing them, but also to show how I see that to other people; and to show other people how I see them to themselves. People often don’t think they are important or have stories to tell. If I can see them from my perspective and show them that they are worth their stories, it helps them to understand themselves better. So, how do you go about choosing your projects or do they come to you? They come to me, but I have to be there, to be open to see it for what it is. There have been projects that I have thought about for years before I started shooting them, because there are doubts about their value, the feasibility, etc. But, there are times like the Korean Funerary Portraits [published in the New York Times in 2016] that I worked on—I thought about doing it for a long time, but I guess you could say it came to me. It started with Juliana’s grandfather visiting one day in a suit. She thought that he was going to need a funerary portrait one day and so she got her camera. She took pictures of him, and then a year or two later when he did pass, she had the pictures she had taken knowing that they would be needed. She gave them out to her family. Many years later, her uncle got ill and they didn’t have any photos then either, but her family asked her if she had any. Juliana found some and redid the images to create funerary pictures. Her dad, one day, asked how much it would cost to have funerary portraits done. She asked why as she didn’t realize that it was a thing that people did. It turned out one of the congregants was doing them for a small fee, but he wasn’t a professional. That planted a seed showing there was a need and a service that she could provide, and for which she had experience. So, she thought she could volunteer, but also make it a cultural piece that would tell the story of who the person was in this life. The original idea was that while sitting in front of the camera she would ask them questions like, “How do you want to be remembered?”; “Did you dress a certain way for a reason today for this to be remembered?” The reflection of their stories could then be seen on their face to express who or what they were in life. It was a personal project and touched upon Juliana’s personal story. What would your main piece of advice be to a young universal Asian, who is wanting to celebrate being Asian, but looking for a role model? In other words, what would your takeaway be for them? I don’t know. All I can say is, this is something that has been said so many times, but your own perspective, life, and story is so much more interesting than telling someone else’s story or what is hot right now. The more you can personalize something, and the more specific you can be about something that you know or feel dear about, the more people will be interested, and the more people you will reach. So, regardless of how very banal or quotidian whatever you are documenting is, if it’s your experience, then it is completely valid.

The Universal Asian got to know Lava Buckley, a talented filmmaker and producer. She recently won Outstanding Female Content Creator in the Asian American Film Lab™ 2020 72 Hour Shootout! Tell us about yourself. Oh boy. Well, I grew up in Appalachia, Ohio on the border of West Virginia, in a town called Athens. My mom is from Thailand, and so I would say I’m one of the early generation mixed race kids. It was shortly after the law passed that mixed race couples could marry. I was born in the mid-'70s, so growing up in Appalachia as a mixed Asian kid was very challenging. We weren’t allowed to have our own culture, not allowed to speak our language, I got spit on quite a bit, and called ‘jungle baby’. All in all, not really pleasant. I’m always happy to see how much more accepting kids are now of being mixed race. From eight-years-old on, I lived with my mother; and I was raised very Thai. I ended up in the international district. All my friends were from different countries, different races—so I went from growing up in a small, kind of scary, racist town to a much more accepting, diverse community. It was nice to have the two dynamics. What got you into filmmaking? When I was eight—when my parents divorced—we lived in a domestic violence shelter called My Sister’s Place. The shelter was amazing; it’s an amazing organization. They set us up in a small apartment and got us some basics to start living and surviving. I remember shortly after we got out of the shelter, I was watching TV and I saw Audrey Hepburn on the TV with children. And, I thought "if I get into the film industry, I can help poor kids too." I could become an ambassador! That actually kind of stuck in my head for most of my life; the idea that if I work in film, I could do some good that can change and help people. What can you tell us about the process of creating your latest short film, “Charlie”? It’s very interesting! I actually love all the different aspects of filmmaking: the pre-production, the production, and post; it’s all really exciting. What I like is that every project is so different, and I’m grateful that I have a foot in both the indie world and high budget studio work. So, I can take a lot of that studio knowledge and experience I have and do what I can with an indie film. When I was writing “Charlie,” I knew that I would have very limited resources. I was like, okay I know how to shoot this with a certain budget, $2000, and I want to make sure I pay everyone involved. I can do that, at least. I wanted everyone to feel good about participating. So, I found this story probably five years ago after working on a western. I was in the casting department, and I was working with someone who didn’t believe there was much diversity in the Old West. I started doing my own research and I found the story about Charlie. We don’t know much about her, so I decided to write it as an inspired story. I wanted it to be real and not say "based on a true story," because there’re a lot of elements I did take out, such as the fact that there should be three white men and two Chinese people. I had to work with my resources. I had a really fantastic Chinese woman, whom I loved working with. I knew I could find a white actor, and I knew the location. I really felt inspired because those railroad tracks in the town I live in actually have a plaque dedicated to the Chinese railroad workers who helped build it. So that was my process in creating the story, and I really wanted to stick with the idea of trying to make sure Charlie stays strong and not a victim. Does your cultural identity influence the work you produce? If so, in what way? I will say that most of the stuff I want to create— “Charlie” included—is totally influenced by my cultural background. I like writing stories about strong Asian women. I know “Charlie” is about a Chinese immigrant, and I’m Thai, but I still felt very connected to her. I could actually see my mother doing this role. My mom has overcome so much. I don’t know, Charlie just has that feel to me of what my mom would be like, fighting back, finding ways to be resourceful, and just kicking ass. That’s how I see Asian women. I see them strong; I see them resilient, determined. I just think they’re badass. Do you think art should be political? Why or why not? I would say, not always. For me, it is what I’m interested in. I do tend to write about the experiences of Asian women because I do feel like we have been ignored and incorrectly perceived by a lot of the public. If I can, I will write stuff with political stories. I think we need a balance. We have lots of great entertainment out there. My mind just feels more driven to write about this to show that racism towards Asians has existed since the 1800s; this is not new. The way that we fetishize Asian women, that’s not new. The way we try to make them weak, this is not new stuff, and it drives me. I’m not saying I have it right; I’m not going to do it perfectly—even people in our own community may not like it, but I realized a long time ago with filmmaking and art, you can make the best project in the world, and someone will hate it. What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers? I have a couple things. One, I’ll just say it again, no matter what you make, someone’s going to hate it and someone’s going to love it. Accept that at the beginning. What can you do? You can’t satisfy everyone, not even your own community. People want to be gatekeepers on how you can present yourself and talk. Nobody is your gatekeeper. No one’s the gatekeeper of my voice anymore; I used to let people tell me my ethnicity, tell me how much I belong or don’t belong. I don’t give them that permission anymore. That was important for me, to own my voice. Another thing I would say is—I recently did life coaching, and my life coach asked me, "do you know enough right now to make your film?" Once I realized it didn’t have to be perfect and I knew enough to get it done, I knew I’d rather have it done than never completed at all. So, I just want to encourage people: don’t wait for perfect. Work with what you have and see what happens. You’ll just get better each time you do that. What impact does social media have on film? Would you say it’s an overall good or bad effect? Oh man. I struggle with social media. It’s finding a balance, that’s what I’ve been discovering with my own film career and social media. I do see the benefits of having it for promotion, to connect with other people in your community or people who would be interested in your projects. It has a lot of good. There is a lot of not-so-good, in the sense that it can suck up all your time. Also, there are a lot of assholes that just hide there. I don’t even know, it’s like, did you even see the movie? Are you just writing that to be a jerk? You gotta just let those people roll off you. Easier said than done because I do get a little bit affected by that stuff. Social media is an interesting place because it’s kind of unhinged, you know? The good of social media has brought a lot of awareness for the Asian community and mixed-race community, giving us voices that we didn’t have before. Also, it’s shown other people that we have things to say, and you haven’t been listening. I try to take the good, and I’m just trying to navigate it myself. Do you have any projects in the works you can tell us about? Yes, I do! I’m in pre-production for a documentary. It’s about honoring and celebrating our Asian clothes. I was thinking so much about identity, and it’s very important to me that we keep having our own clothing. I have my western clothes, nothing’s wrong with that, but I think we should learn from history. One of the first things that colonizers did here is take away the clothing of the natives from some of the tribes. What that does is strip them of identity, and I really sat with that idea for a bit. We should embrace that we are different, it’s okay that we don’t all wear the same clothes. I fear this idea of assimilation and losing who we are. We often get accused of being the model minority and being white adjacent, and it’s like, well how can we point out that we actually have a rich culture? It’s with clothing. So, that’s my documentary, kind of exploring this idea of identity through clothing. More press on Lava: https://thecre8sianproject.com/blogs/news/amazing-asians-in-the-arts-lava-buckley You can also connect with Lava on Instagram: @lifewithlava

E.J. Koh is author of the memoir "The Magical Language of Others" (Tin House Books, 2020), winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award and Longlist for the PEN Open Book Award; and the poetry collection "A Lesser Love" (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry. Koh is also the recipient of the Virginia Faulkner Award and fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, Jack Straw Writers Program, Kundiman, MacDowell, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Vermont Studio Center. She is the editor of "Pleiades: Poetry by Korean American Women." Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for Creative Writing and Literary Translation. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington in Seattle for English Language and Literature, and Korean and Korean American literature, history, and film. Visit her site to learn more. Eun Ji Koh’s journey began when she was 15, and her parents moved back to South Korea, leaving Koh and her brother alone in California to raise themselves. While Koh and her parents lived apart, her mother stayed in touch by sending handwritten letters in Korean. Koh has written absolute masterpieces like "The Magical Language of Others" and "A Lesser Love." In every book, she has managed to put together words in such a way as to take the reader back in time to the place she describes, and readers are able to experience every little detail in a very delicate and intricate manner. Her way of writing touches the reader’s heart, allowing them to deeply and specifically feel emotions and connections. Koh has also continued to translate and write poetry, fiction, and nonfiction works, which helped her achieve various honors in her field. Diving deeper into her works; Koh, in "A Lesser Love" describes heaven as signifying home, and war as signifying her past, how it impacted her, and its ties to her grandmother and great grandfather; thereby, shedding light on her childhood. In her debut memoir, "The Magical Language of Others," she translates letters that she discovered years later, that were written by her mother over the course of several years and traces the connections between mothers and daughters, cultures and histories, and her own journey to write about them across Korea, Japan, and the U.S. Through her books, Koh has always conveyed many deep and diverse messages. In my interview with her for TUA, she shared her challenges, emotions, and advice for writers out there. When you started out as a writer, what would you say helped you stay inspired despite all the challenges/obstacles? Looking back, a part of me believed I didn’t have to be anybody to have something worthwhile to say. That kind of thinking when I was younger helped me through some difficult times. Is there any process that you follow while putting together a book? It’s not the same for every book. I plan mostly not to plan, but sometimes I can make outlines if there’s something I feel needs another look. If there’s a problem that sticks around, I tend to “sit back” and observe the things I read or experience in my life. There is a sense the pieces will come to me, but if I go after them, they’ll run away. You have received numerous honors up until now. However, at which moment would you say you felt like you had achieved what you set out to do. My family complains about how I ask them questions. Because I ask a lot of questions, and when I’m given an answer, I have to re-word the answer and say it back until I’ve understood them as clearly as possible. I feel satisfaction and relief when I can grasp something I couldn’t before. What do you want your readers to learn from your books. Is there any specific message or emotion that you are trying to convey? My answer will probably change, but right now, I’d like to hold as many things as I can at one time. Rage and grief—with forgiveness and love. We are constantly separating and coming together. What advice would you give to someone who wants to get into becoming a writer? One advice I might give is to feel secure in uncertainty. Certainty is helpful, but it can also be limiting. But uncertainty, though it can be tough to write through, brings with it unlimited possibilities. To feel secure in uncertainty is to savor the surprises and experience magic.

The Universal Asian got to know Joanne Paek, a growing ceramic artist. She is also the creator of JO AND CLAY, a Southern California–based ceramic shop where every piece is handmade and designed uniquely. Visit the site to know more about her recent additions and designs. Tell us about yourself and your experience growing up? Hey there, my name is Joanne Paek and I’m a Korean American gal, born and raised around L.A./O.C. With my dad being a designer and mom a musician, I grew up in a fairly creative home. All things art-related were always interesting & came very naturally to me, so in high school and college/post-college I did some art and theater, and am happy to be exploring and creating to this day. How did you develop an interest in ceramics? Is there any special story or emotion behind that? I’ve always been a creative person, and a few years ago I was looking for a new medium to work with. I was used to working in 2D, so I wanted to try something in 3D. I picked clay, signed up for pottery classes at a local studio, ended up finishing a two-year ceramics program at OCC, and have been making [pieces] out of my garage ever since. What is the story behind JO AND CLAY? How did that start? JO AND CLAY started from setting a personal goal to start selling some work. I’ve always had mixed feelings about making money from my creations, but I wanted to open that door for myself. Learning to set up/make online sales was a giant learning curve that came with a lot of challenges, but ultimately led to the beginning of JO AND CLAY. As a ceramic artist, what is one of the most challenging experiences you’ve faced and how did you overcome that? One of the most challenging experiences I face as a ceramic artist is finding the balance between creating to create, and creating to make a living. It has helped me learn how to divide my time in ways that allow the space for both. Talking about challenges, who would you say was your greatest supporter and why? There are so many major supporters in my life that make doing ceramics possible for me. I have amazing friends and a ceramics community that always generously offer their help & resources, and ever-supportive parents who gave me a space to create in their home. How do you keep yourself fresh and inspired during times like these? Inspiration can be found anywhere. Sometimes it is refreshing to see what artists and designers are up to on the Internet. It’s also incredible to see how master potters find their inspiration from nature. I find that my most meaningful work comes out of pulling from both external observations and moments of introspection. Much of my inspiration tends to come from experimentation and Korean culture/pottery. What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a ceramic artist? There really is no one way to be a ceramic artist. Take note of inspiration when it comes, keep making, and have fun as you’re doing it!

The Universal Asian got to know Helenna Santos: actor, writer, and producer. Her poetry book “A Long Dark Summer” is available for purchase. See her website for details! Tell us about yourself. Where are you from/where did you grow up? Well, I was born in California, and my mom is from the Vancouver, British Columbia area, so I had dual citizenship from when I was really young. My dad is from the Philippines, so we actually lived in Singapore and the Philippines before he ended up immigrating to Canada when I was 5. I was in Canada from 5 to 26-ish; then I moved down to L.A. for 10 years. I’m back up here in Vancouver now, working and living. I’ve been a little bit all over the place, but I’m grateful that I had such a varied experience and life as an artist. The thing about Vancouver is that it’s stunningly beautiful five to six months out of the year, and then the other six is torrential downpour. I always tell people: if you’re going to visit Vancouver, you want to see her as beautiful as she is, but if you want to move there you should probably go in the fall so you understand the reality of what it’s like here half the year. It shocks a lot of people. When did you start acting? Like, earnestly? Probably when I did the BFA—I got my Bachelor of Fine Arts in college; graduated in 2004. Before that I’d done musical theater shows and plays in school, but not a lot of it. I was actually a jazz singer, and I was planning on doing that for my life. I had scholarships to go to places, but I actually decided to stay closer to home, which I’m glad I did, because deciding I was really bored just doing jazz music theory all the time is kind of what propelled me into finding acting and everything that goes along with that. With the creative endeavor of being an actor, you can be a writer and a director and a producer, and all of the other things. It’s a fully collaborative art form that I don’t think I would have found if I had just stayed in the track to be a jazz singer. Do you have a preferred genre in film or TV? I love so many different things for so many reasons. I really love episodic television in general, whether that’s a limited series or a long-running network show. There’s just something about, as an actor, being on set in something that has this life that goes on for years and years and years, in some cases. It’s just really exciting to be a part of. I do really enjoy the CW network shows; some people find them cheesy or whatever, but I really love acting in that kind of stuff because there’s always a little bit of comedy you can throw in there, but the stakes are really high. There’s a lot of room to play with stuff. I also love independent film. I’ve produced two indie features and I’ve done a lot of indie films, and I love that for completely different reasons. That’s the fun part about being an actor; you get to play in all of these different worlds, whether that’s a world you helped create or somebody else’s world. It’s kind of the best thing, truly. Who is your dream director to work with and why? Oh my gosh, so many. Okay, if I had to choose one director right now, it might have to be Karyn Kusama. She did Girlfight (2000), Jennifer’s Body (2009), Æon Flux (2005), and then she did The Invitation (2015), which is an amazing indie horror film. I really love her work, and I feel like she doesn’t get recognized enough for how absolutely incredible she is. Her work is great; her sensibility is amazing. She kind of floats between genres a little bit, in a way that a CW show kind of does. She does really hard-hitting drama, but then Jennifer’s Body (2009) is this really subversive, cool movie that got slammed when it came out, but it’s got so many levels in there that, since it became a cult favorite, people are now starting to discover. I feel like it’s time for her to really get recognized, and it would be such an honor to work with her and learn from her. There’s so many people, but she’s top of my list right now for sure. What advice do you have for aspiring actors? Ooh. Hours of advice. When I started out, there wasn’t really much in the way of guidance. I mean, the Internet was just starting to be a thing. I graduated in 2004 so Facebook hadn’t even started yet, there was no Instagram, no Twitter, podcasts didn’t exist, and YouTube wasn’t a thing. Now with so much at our fingertips, it’s imperative for anyone interested in being involved in the industry to educate yourself on what that really means. You can be an actor who does community theater or you can do your own short films—you can go about it that way and really enjoy your life and have fun and be an artist that way, but if you want to make it a business and you want that to be your career, it’s a whole different thing. I would say one of the best places to start off is just listening to podcasts. There’re so many podcasts now that are amazing resources for actors, that can help you dip your toe into the world and see if that’s what you want to spend time and energy and training on, or if you want to have it be a hobby, which is completely fine. Being an artist in any form can be a hard road, but if it’s something inside you that you have to do, it’s a calling. For most of us that stay in this business a really long time, it’s not an easy “do it or don’t do it.” It’s like, we have to do it and figure out a way to make that work, whether it’s a hobby or a career. What do you want to see in the future of AAPI representation on screen? More, more, and always more. I was actually watching a Hollywood Reporter roundtable the other day that had the comedic actresses of this year, and there was zero AAPI representation. We think it’s getting better, and it is getting better, but in these tiny, incremental steps. It’s not enough. But, the great thing is that one of my favorite shows, Kung Fu (2021), is an accurate picture of people living their lives. Yes, it’s about her (the lead character) background and stuff, but the people in it, they’re just humans living life. It doesn’t have to be a show about specific heritages and things; it can just be humans. Why can’t the lead in whatever thing—you know that whole thing #StarringJohnCho, it was shocking to me when I did see those posters because I was like, woah that is weird to see him in those lead roles. Why is that weird? Oh yeah, we haven’t seen any of that. I haven’t seen any of that. Part of the reason why I started producing work is because I didn’t see anybody who looked like me. Why can’t this other character, who is white, in a show just be a POC or mixed-race actor instead? The CW and Freeform do a really good job with that. I think that because those are networks that are skewed to slightly younger viewers, it’s expected. Everyone knows the world is changing and growing, and that representation is different and needs to be important. So it’s kind of a non-issue, whereas, some of the longer standing studios and networks, it’s a little harder to break down their ideas because they’re still run by very powerful, older white men. It’ll take some time, but we just need to keep championing each other’s voices. You recently published “A Long Dark Summer.” How did that come to life? For so many years I had written poetry as a hobby, and one of my things was that I always wanted to publish a book of poetry one day. At the top of the pandemic, I really wanted to put it all together and figure out a way to do that in a narrative form that would make sense for all the different pieces—and there was a whole lot of new stuff I was working on. I just wanted to do it because I love writing poems and telling stories in that way. So I put together what I call a pseudo-memoir, because it is loosely based on my experience as a biracial woman, growing up where I grew up, and my experience in Hollywood. It takes the reader through 1993 to now, 2021, and it has an overarching narrator that you go on a journey with. It’s got a dark tone, but it also has a lot of nice bite to it, and some humor. It’s very indicative of who I am; I always say that my Filipino side and my Russian-German side are at odds with each other. There’s this bright Filipino and then there’s this brooding Russian. It’s kind of like, if you want to get to know who I am, just read this book. It’ll tell you exactly what kind of person I am and what I am as an artist. “A Long Dark Summer” Cover photo: Bjoern Kommerell

The Universal Asian got to know Danny Cho, an engaging stand-up comic currently based in Korea. See his TEDx Talk here! You can also find him on Instagram. Tell us about your background. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I grew up in a predominantly Latino neighborhood, where I was the only Asian family there. So, up until the end of middle school, I was part of the minority. Then in high school—my parents basically said, you need to go to a better high school because you’re not going to have a better future if you go to a high school in this area—so I went to a high school in the suburbs of South Pasadena. I went on to UCLA, and graduated with an international economics major and an accounting minor. So, that’s kind of my educational background. When I was a kid, there was this comedy series called "Deaf Comedy Jam." It was on HBO, and the kids would illegally record it and share the tapes around. Back then, "Deaf Comedy Jam" was a huge thing. A lot of stars broke out of there, like Chris Tucker, Dave Chappelle, Bernie Mac. It was all the Black comics, actually. I didn’t even know this was a thing. Like, people do this for a living. People make money doing this. I think for me, growing up in East L.A., there was a juxtaposition of being the only Asian kid in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. I learned the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish, which doesn’t make sense, but they taught it. During recess, kids would do “Yo’ Mama” jokes, and we would basically just trash each other’s mothers. I think that was kind of the gym for me in terms of learning how to be funny or mean, or both, really. How did you get into stand-up comedy? Basically, the summer between high school and college, my friends dared me to do stand-up comedy. Even after I graduated and got a job at a consulting firm, I was doing stand-up part-time. I would leave the office, go to the comedy club, tell jokes, then come back to the office and finish work. I did that for three years. Then I decided—well, not just me—there were a handful of people who convinced me to quit my job to pursue stand-up comedy full-time. Number one was a comedian named Bobby Lee. Bobby Lee goes, “Hey, I need someone fat and weird looking on set tomorrow.” So instead of getting angry, I said, “What time do you need me there, buddy?” So, I get on set, and in between takes, he’s like, “Hey, man, do you have an agent?” He goes, “There’s two types of people that get famous on TV. Really good looking people and fucking mutants. And you, my friend, look like a mutant. You’re weird looking and you look like a human thumb.” On the spot, he calls an agent. He goes, “Hey, there’s this kid. He’s hilarious. He looks weird, he’s perfect.” And, the next day, I go to the agent’s office. No headshot, no resume, nothing. They signed me right on the spot. I quit my stable, high-paying salary job to become a person who tells dirty jokes. But, the high you get from performing in front of a live audience, them giving you that energy, you’re chasing that high. You know what I mean? It’s like a high that you’re going to continue to chase. I feel like I’m fully addicted to that feeling. How would you describe your sense of humor? I’m an asshole. I’m a jerk on stage, really. You know what I mean? I’m pretty filthy on stage. I’m pretty blue. So that’s also culturally shocking to be like, why is he talking about that on stage? In English, I’m not that dirty anymore, but in Korean, I just do it just to show it’s possible that there is this type of stand-up too. In the beginning, there’s going to be a lot of pushback because people are not familiar with it. But, the idea of stand-up doesn’t always have to be political. It doesn’t always have to be smart. It doesn’t always have to be dirty. There’s a variety of styles and genres of stand-up. So, it’s just me wanting to show people that it can work. And, it’s been working so far. How do you deal with tough crowds? In the beginning, if there were a hundred people in the audience, I wanted all of them to like me. But, as you do it for a long time, you realize that’s impossible. That’s just life. All I can do is be myself if I bomb. I’m not going to try too hard to not bomb. There’s a comedian, Patrice O’Neal who died many years ago, and one of his philosophies was, “I’m not going to die alone. We’re all going to die together in this experience.” He makes bombing worse so that everyone feels uncomfortable. There’s something admirable about that philosophy. I try to do that now and again, especially in Korea, where dirty jokes aren’t always everybody’s cup of tea. Once I venture into that, I can see people pull back, and sometimes I’ll attack them. I’ll be like, how do you think you got here? Like, do you think some magical bird dropped you off at your parents’ doorstep? The way you got here is because of what I’m talking about right now. Personally, stand-up is kind of like omakase. You eat what I make. If you can’t eat it, don’t eat it. How does Korean comedy differ from American comedy? In Korea, the concept of comedy, it’s usually more slapstick-y. I wouldn’t even say SNL, I would say more high school talent show improv. I personally don’t think it’s any good. I think most consumers in Korea go, oh, that’s what comedy is. There’s a lot of props, a lot of makeup, costume changes, things like that. I think that’s the number one thing people probably don’t get [about American comedy]. They’re like, “Wait, so let me get this straight. All you have is a microphone. You’re not going to get dressed, you’re not going to put on makeup or a funny wig. You’re just going to talk?” I’m like, “yeah, that’s what that is.” But, I think because a lot of people watch Netflix here and stuff like that, the sound of comedy exists, and they know that it exists. Even on YouTube, there’s a lot of people that subtitle stand-up comedy bits. What advice do you have for up-and-coming comedians? Don’t do it. It’s hard. It just sucks. I would not consider myself an actor by any means, but I’ve been in a bunch of commercials, I’ve been in movies and sitcoms and whatever, and it’s a rough business. My only advice is: you better really want it, because if not, all the hardships are going to really kick your ass. It’s going to kick your ass if you don’t love it—and even if you love it. People will say, for example, “Oh, my god, that’s like one day of work and you make $30,000. That’s amazing.” That’s not including how many auditions you failed, you know what I mean? That’s not including all that other stuff, the callbacks, all that stuff. So to me, the entertainment business as a whole is filled with so many talented people, you know? Nothing in this world is a meritocracy. Just because you think you’re good doesn’t mean that you deserve it. That’s something that I had to learn the hard way. That’s what I would tell aspiring entertainers:  you’re going to get your ass kicked a lot in this business. Also, I would say be you. You know what I mean? Draw some lines, stuff that you wouldn’t do. Don’t do it just to get famous. Don’t do any of this just to get famous. Do it because you love it. It has to be love. If it’s just to get famous, then get the fuck out of here. What would you tell your younger self? Don’t drink like that. I would tell my younger self: it’s kind of like being at the DMV or a deli line that’s fucked up. Your number is eventually going to be called. It’s just a matter of when. It’s a matter of "are you willing to stick it out till your number is called?" There’s no order. It’s like 1 and then 350, and so you go, wait what about me? I’m 10. I thought I was nine people back. But no. There are people who get their break early and there are people, like Morgan Freeman, who didn’t get his big break until he was in his late 50s. I would say "don’t give up" or those types of things. And, yes, I believe it. If you love it, stick with it. Oh, one more thing. Younger self—read some more books.

The Universal Asian got to know Mao Sun, an actor and producer. He has appeared in a variety of short films as well as network television, including the Netflix series “The Stranded.” As a producer, he works with Satellite Films, a company that creates content for a diverse clientele, from biotech to The CW network. “I was born in Springfield, raised in Northampton,” began Mao Sun. The L.A.-based actor grew up in Western Massachusetts, a progressive area. “It was a very liberal town,” he recalled, “but I was always the only Asian kid.” During his childhood, his close relationship with his family was a balm and a blessing. “I was crazy quiet growing up,” he said. “In being quiet, I didn’t really have to explain as much about my culture as opposed to if I did talk.” However, his inner performer found ways to shine through, despite his outward shyness. “I always kind of acted as a kid,” Sun described. “I did historical renditions and stuff like that, and I really, really liked it. In sixth grade, I was a big fan of my reading and English classes—and even my music classes. I got to express myself. I didn’t really get to do that at home.” Still, it wasn’t until after college that Sun seriously considered committing to acting as a career. “I didn’t really think anything of it,” he said. “But then the next day, I said screw it, I’m going to take an acting class. The first scene I did was from "Scent of a Woman" with Al Pacino. We did the scene, and I felt so good whether I acted well or not. It [was] just so liberating. I’[d] never done this before—cried or showed imaginary anxiety in front of a bunch of strangers. And I [thought]: this is what I want to do.” “It’s a form of therapy,” he continued. “It’s stepping into somebody else’s shoes and thinking from an outside perspective, altering a state of mind in order to see why certain steps within a script or character are legitimate. And to have that perspective has really opened my eyes to just general life as well.” It wasn’t an easy decision, by any means. Sun left behind a job in advertising, a job he’d been at for over two years. “When I was working in advertising, it was great because I knew my trajectory in five years,” he said. “I knew [it would be] junior account manager to account manager to senior account manager. That [would] take three to four years.” Unfortunately, most actors do not have the luxury of stability or certainty. “I can’t make plans a month in advance,” said Sun. “[I don't have] a schedule or financial comfort at all. People don’t want to admit it, [but] it’s still a very objective industry. The product is yourself, and so you’re kind of selling yourself, which sucks. That’s the business of show business. There’s a facade you have to put on in order to appease people. It’s skill-based to a certain extent.” The harsh reality of show business is something that all actors must come to terms with at one point or another, and what sets the truly dedicated actors apart is the ability to push forward despite the overwhelming hurdles in their path. “Don’t do it unless you absolutely want it,” Sun advised, “because it’s not worth it unless it’s what wakes you up in the morning, unless it’s what truly makes you happy, [unless] you can’t see yourself doing anything else. Don’t you dare get in this industry because you see all these actors and everything on TV, [because] that’s literally five percent of people. Even though I got a few co-star roles, that’s not equivalent to getting a job at Google and being able to get a job anywhere else. Do it only if, deep down, you know this is what you’re meant to do.” Aside from actual politics, the entertainment industry could arguably be called the second most political industry in the U.S. The ongoing debates about authenticity, diversity, and so on have no end in sight, and neither should they. Our understanding of culture and identity is ever-changing, ever-growing to fit the society and people we are today, tomorrow, the day after. “I want to be able to bend the stereotypes,” said Sun, when asked about remembrance, “push a way forward for myself, my family, and hopefully the culture. I don’t want Asians to be in movies for being able to fight—which is fun and everything—but it’s such a stereotype. I [want] people to know that I’m American. I just want to be American. I want to pave the way in 50 years for Asians not just to be Asian, but to be fully American. This is what Americans look like.” “I don’t think all art should be political,” he went on to explain. “If it’s forcefully political, then it’s not really fun to watch. You’re kind of just putting more gas in the fire. It’s not funny. I think art itself doesn’t need to have an agenda. I think it could. It’s art. It doesn’t have a criteria of what it should be. Art doesn’t need to have a purpose, so you can make art however you want it. I think if you’re political in art, then go for it. But make sure you go all the way with it, make sure it’s true to your heart and that you’re not just going with a trend. As long as art comes from who you really are, then that’s all that matters. “Just appreciate who you are and who you’re surrounded by,” Sun finished. Find Mao Sun on IMDb.

Christine Ha is a powerhouse of creativity and resilience. She was the first-ever blind contestant and winner of Gordon Ramsey’s amateur cooking show MasterChef, defeating over 30,000 home cooks to win the title of MasterChef, a $250,000 cash prize, and a cookbook deal ("Recipes from My Kitchen"). Ha also holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Business of Administration from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition to those accomplishments, she has also served as the culinary envoy for the American Embassy as part of the cultural diplomacy program in several countries, spoken on disability advocacy at the United Nations, given Tedx Talks, opened two successful restaurants, and much more. The deeper you get to know Ha, the more you realize that, even without sight, there’s nothing she can’t do. Tell us a bit about your story. I am best known for being the visually impaired cook that won MasterChef Season 3 in the U.S. I’m also a New York Times best-selling cookbook author and owner of two restaurants in Houston: The Blind Goat and Xin Chào. What was your childhood like? I’m California-born, Texas-raised. I grew up an only child. My parents were Vietnamese refugees. Was cooking always one of your passions? No. I started cooking when I was in college, mainly because I had to learn to live independently. It wasn’t until I began teaching myself to cook that I realized I enjoyed it a lot. It was just a hobby, though, until I competed on MasterChef, which opened many opportunities for me in the culinary world afterward. What challenges did you face as a second-generation Asian American, and how did you work through them? I felt the burden of straddling two different cultures growing up. Like many who grew up like me, I wasn’t American enough at school and not Vietnamese enough at home. Eventually, I realized that I didn’t have to identify as one or the other, but that I could be both. And being both is beautiful. When you found out you had neuromyelitis optica (NMO) at 20, how did you feel? What helped you transform what many perceive as a limitation into one of your biggest strengths? I felt lonely and isolated as it was—and still is—a rare disease. I didn’t know anyone losing their vision nor who had NMO at the time. I decided to educate myself as much as possible about the disease and become my own best advocate for my healthcare. Once I found a treatment plan that stabilized my health, I learned to adapt to what was my new normal of being visually impaired, and having to understand my condition, and recognizing the onset of symptoms, and knowing what to do when that happens. How do you navigate a kitchen and cooking without sight? I have to be extremely organized, but that goes for any kitchen and cook, whether sighted or not. I have a few adaptive tools in my kitchen, like raised bump dot stickers that help mark my stovetop and appliances with tactile markers, but otherwise, my kitchen operates like most others. What are your favorite foods to cook and eat? I love cooking and eating everything. I always enjoy trying new things. A comfort food that I do love to eat is fried rice. I like that it uses up leftover ingredients, can be cooked in one pan (wok), and is eaten out of a bowl with one spoon. That is the quintessential comfort food. What and/or who has been the most essential support as you’ve built your business and brand? Why? My partner in life and business, John. He brings certain strengths to our businesses, like branding, technology, and marketing. We complement each other well because we bring different things to the table, but most importantly, we respect each other’s opinions and trust that even though we may not always see eye to eye, we both want the very best for our companies and share the same long-term vision and goals. What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment? Why? Creating two restaurants, building a team, and seeing them grow and be successful. What goals do you have for the future? Continue to work on the restaurants, start new ones, write another cookbook, finish my memoir, and finish the documentary film I’ve been working on for the past three years. What advice would you give to others receiving a life-altering diagnosis like yours? Know that it’s normal to go through the grief process, but at some point, understand that life will continue on. You must find a supportive community, whether that means family, friends, other patients, a healthcare team, or all of the aforementioned. When you have a good support network and the right, positive attitude, you can and will be able to achieve great things. Find out more about Christine and what she’s currently up to: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook: @theblindcook YouTube: ChristineHaTube Website Cover photo: Julie Soefer

Upon first seeing an article on the now defunct April Magazine about Chef Jenny Dorsey, we were curious to know more about the woman who has taken on the mission of using food to get people to challenge their beliefs and understandings through discussion with others as they experience each intentionally thought-provoking dish. Continue on as we learn how Chef Dorsey struggles with identity and how she works toward helping others to understand our universal Asian identities. So, where did life begin for you and what was your experience like growing up? I was born in Shanghai, and then I immigrated here to New York, originally, when I was three and a half with my grandparents. My parents are both scientists and they had already come to the States so they could pursue their doctorates. So, I didn’t see them for the first couple years of my life. After that, I have vague memories of being really bad at English in kindergarten or maybe it was first grade. I would get really good grades on things like participation or being friendly, but my actual English was terrible. Obviously, slowly over time I became like a native English speaker. Now, I’m actually trying to learn Chinese again. Still, it’s kind of a struggle trying to balance the two sides. Because I was very close to my grandparents growing up, I felt more attached to my Chinese side. However, I grew up in the Bronx where there were really very few other Asian kids. When I was about eight, we moved to Bellevue, which is a suburb of Seattle, where again it was not super Asian. So, it was a weird dichotomy of always wanting to be white and always feeling like I was different, but I couldn’t change it. How did you cope with that or learn to cope with it? It took a really long time. Actually, I just started talking to my parents again about six months ago. I hadn’t talked to them for like two years. I had cut off ties, as I had a lot of resentment and anger. I was an only child. So, I understand that they didn’t have a trial run before me. Everybody’s trying to learn how to parent. But, I learned there were a lot of issues in my childhood that I felt went unresolved. Even to this day, we haven’t really talked about them. So, what I really have had to do, through therapy, was to decide that I can either ignore my parents forever, or I can just let it go and move forward with them. So, I think in terms of coping, it really has been just clarifying what are my boundaries and what am I going to allow in my life now. With all that as your background then, how do you identify yourself now, either ethnically or in general? I think if I’m talking to an Asian person, I will specify that I’m Chinese. But, I feel like with other races, I don’t really have to say anything. Often, they’re too nervous to probe too deeply. It’s funny though, after I married a white man, I changed my last name for various purposes. The main reason is because there are so many Jenny Wangs. I actually had a Chinese first name, but then I changed it as my middle name to make it more “accessible.” That’s a complicated decision and I know many Asian-Americans have mixed feelings about it. All I can say is, for me, it works. However, the thing is that unless you see a picture of me, you don’t inherently know that I’m Asian. So, it has been kind of interesting to see the reactions of people when they do realize. So, how do you feel when someone shows surprise that you’re Asian? There’s always a little bit of amusement in it for me. I kind of enjoy it. I tend to wonder how would their reaction or how would our interaction have gone differently if they had known beforehand? Or, what about my personality traits make them expect that I am white and not Asian? So, I want to know what they are toggling in their mind that changes their expectations of me? I’m always curious, because usually I’ve already interacted with them via email or phone, so why is there a disconnect? A favorite discussion point of mine is on the question of “Where are you from?” What is your reaction to that? Oh yeah, I get that all the time. I get it all the time online, too. I’ve been on a couple of reality cooking competitions. And, someone literally messaged me like multiple times trying to figure out where I am from. I think it is really fascinating that whenever I’m somewhere that isn’t a big city or cosmopolitan area, if I get into an Uber without my husband, that is the first question. They just can’t help it. Most of the time, I try not to encourage the behavior by not responding. But, some are really persistent and they want to know the answers. Sometimes, I will deflect or I just refuse to tell them. I’ll say I’m from New York. But, you can tell it’s not satisfying and it’s not what they wanted to hear. So, they try to figure it out in a different way by asking about my family. At times, I will be exhausted and just say I’m from China. They always look so excited that they finally figured it out. What I think is so interesting is not them asking, but the fact that they feel it’s their right to have ownership over your face and your identity. Both minorities and non do this, it’s like an ingrained feeling people learn towards minorities, in general. What is your sense as to why Asians are stereotyped in the way that they are? As with stereotypes in general, I think it comes from taking one small nugget of truth and it just gets blown up because of an unwillingness to be uncomfortable. The reality is that we are only going to be acutely aware and attuned to our own experiences. I don’t know what it’s like to be a black woman, or undocumented person, or someone who presents as racially ambiguous. But, the only way we are going to learn more about others’ experiences is to ask. Many times people asking about others’ real life experiences is very uncomfortable. This is especially true if you are in a place of privilege; it’s very discomforting and jarring. People don’t want to do that. Moving now to your career: how did you decide to become a chef? In college, I started as a finance major. I wanted to go into management consulting. So, I ended up in fashion, which was the glamorous thing that I wanted to do. I moved to New York and worked really hard at it. I thought I had it all. But, the funny thing is, when you reach a goal that you construct in your mind based on other people’s expectations, you hit that goal and you’re like, wow, I’m here. That’s it? I was really unhappy. What really made me want to change my direction was seeing a higher up manager on my team who just desperately was trying to fill a hole in her heart with clothes, which were never gonna fill it. So, I quit my job and went to culinary school on a whim. How would you say, if at all, that your sense of identity has influenced your cooking? A lot of my cooking now is about making sure that I can talk about symbolism in the right way. There are always stories with every person’s food, and I really want my food to make sense on multiple levels. So, for example, there’s a dish in one of our series called "Asian in America" that discusses the model minority myth. The main protein is veal sweetbreads. Since this is an organ meat, it’s usually perceived as distasteful. But, in the particular case of veal sweetbreads, we usually see them as gourmet; I draw a parallel to how Asians are always told that if we present ourselves properly, we can also be distinguished as “better” than other minorities. And that’s a lie, as we obviously can see now. I feel like my talent has been in bringing about a sort of translation through my food. So, how do you compile your food projects or choose what you want to present? It really starts with a concept I care about. So, for example, the latest series that we’ve been working on is something called "Glass through Skin," which is about the normalization of female pain. I really wanted to talk about the fact that women are suffering everywhere. But, the problem is that both men and women are used to it. We accept that that’s how things are supposed to be. So, for the first mini course I started with what is the concept of pain and what use it serves. One of the ideas that stood out to me was the trope that women needed to suffer some sort of violent act against them in order to grow and evolve. We see it all the time in books, movies, TV, even everyday conversation. So, how do I get that into a food idea? I was inspired by a line from Sansa Stark on "Game of Thrones" in response to being asked if she regretted her decisions that had caused so much pain. And she more or less says, "If I hadn’t suffered being raped, abused, etc. I would have remained a ‘little bird’ forever." That is infuriating; in her moment of having overcome so much she is attributing her own abilities to those of their abusers. I created a dish where the dish itself is like a bird cage and people are reaching in with this idea of helping to free the little bird. So, they grab this ball made out of partridge and it’s adorned with fancy things, but it’s been speared with an edible glass shard. As you eat through it, you find the actual flavor of the dish lies in the center, which is this molten mousse made out of chicken liver, while the glass shard, or the perpetrator, has no taste at all. The idea is that the complexity and the strength of females have always been inside them and owe nothing to their oppressors. So as you’ve been doing this in creating your own food projects, do you feel or do you think that you’ve ever faced any racism or setbacks because of your ethnicity? Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of times when people are uncomfortable, they usually act in one of two ways: they either withdraw or get really angry. We’ve never really had anger at our dinners because, for the most part, our dinners are self-selecting. People know what they are paying for. However, we’ve had public demos where we get invited to film festivals, conferences, and random people come in. People who have never had to contend with their privilege or been asked to. So, they feel uncomfortable and they can say snarky things. Often because I’m female and young, they tend to be dismissive instead of possibly being more aggressive if I were male. Instead, they make comments like, “very cute” or “what a cute idea.” How do you find yourself responding to that? I used to get very angry and I do still complain about it, but I think I have just become unfazed by it because I realize it has nothing to do with me. What do you want people to most gain from one of your culinary experiences? Our big mission is always about how we can create empathy. Because at the end of the day, it’s one thing to see someone, but unless it pertains to you we can’t imagine how it feels since we haven’t lived their experiences and it’s difficult to really care about their struggles. So, how do we bridge that gap? We really believe that if you can sit across the table from someone who is experiencing something and you can have an open conversation, that’s the beginning of opening your mind in a new way and hopefully changing your worldview. From there, maybe you take a small action like posting on social media and sharing about a new topic. Any step is better than nothing, even if it does feel demoralizing at times. This is the sad reality of the slowness in social change. We’re just trying to create every step we can. What would your takeaway be, then, for younger, aspiring universal Asians? Because Asian-Americans don’t have great representation in so many industries, you don’t even know what’s available to you. I think any time you perhaps don’t know what you want to do, or you literally haven’t seen an example of a person doing what you may want to do, there may be a feeling of discouragement. My biggest advice would be to encourage the next generation to not listen to anyone else. It doesn’t really matter what other people think because you’re the person that you have to go to bed with everyday. You are the only person responsible for you.

As her first short, Ella Wu wrote, directed and produced “Patterns,” which is one of those story-within-a-story films. The narrative unfolds through the lens of a young author struggling with writer’s block, unable to find an appropriate ending for her character, when in reality, she’s talking about herself. It was filmed over the course of a week on Nantucket Island, MA, and due to COVID-19, all of the filming was done on her own. She even biked 10 miles to get that lighthouse shot! Website: www.ellawu.com