They Call Us American Peril

Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.

What's up, podcast listeners? We've got another episode of our podcast They Call Us Bruce. (Almost) each week, my good friend, writer/columnist Jeff Yang and I host an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America, with a strong focus on media, entertainment and popular culture.

In this episode, we welcome our old friend, writer and educator Scott Kurashige, author of American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism. He talks about his personal journey into Asian American activism and movement scholarship; the erasure of anti-Asian racism and colonial violence, and why it seems we are constantly learning and re-learning this history; and why legislating and prosecuting hate crimes isn't necessarily the answer for multiracial solidarity. Also: The Good, The Bad, and The WTF of writing American Peril.

Justice for Jin Chao: If Asian Americans Want Better Media Representation, We Need to Learn to Be Better Critics

Guest Post by Jeff Yang

Welcome to May, folks — the month formerly known as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

And as this month begins, I've rarely been more puzzled and annoyed than I have been over the past few weeks, watching the bizarre backlash against Jin Chao, the small but pivotal part played by actress Helen J. Shen in The Devil Wears Prada 2. 

Shen, best known for her mesmerizing lead turn in Broadway's robots-looking-for-love musical Maybe Happy Ending, is delightful in the role. The character herself is fun, witty and has a real and welcome story arc that ends with her boldly saving the day for Anne Hathaway's Andy and Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestley. She even gets a style glow-up, and is clearly positioned to play a bigger role in a third installment in the story, if there is one.

(Which is not unlikely: The movie banked $77 million at the North America box office and earned $233 million worldwide in its opening weekend, setting it up to match and maybe beat the original's blockbuster take.)

But you wouldn't know that from her 30 seconds of screen time in this promotional clip, which featured Jin meeting her new boss Andy for the first time. “If you don’t want me, you can interview someone else. That’s totally fine,” Jin says. “I did go to Yale, 3.86 GPA, lead soprano of the Whiffenpoofs, and my ACT score was 36 on the very first time."

Jin's brief nervous self-introduction was enough to send the Internet into a meltdown — even though very few people had seen the full movie (and certainly none of those who were engaged in discourse about the character online).