Before the May premiere of his American Born Chinese TV series on Disney+, and following Oscar wins for the movie and actors in Everything Everywhere All At Once, the TV show’s executive producer Kelvin Yu celebrated the strides Asian Americans have made in the film industry at the South by Southwest Festival.
I watched as the mostly Asian audience in Austin applauded Yu, claiming this victory, and more to come, as their own. As an American-born Chinese myself, who grew up watching media depictions of Chinese females as conniving concubines, overbearing tiger-moms (I actually have one of these), or docile students, who let their white peers copy their homework (never in my life!), it was easy to soak up the positive cultural affirmation generated by the recent wave of Asian-American representation in films.
