JOURNALISM CLIPS

Excerpt from "Beyond Representation: On Always Be My Maybe, Class Division, & Gentrification"

"Representation is more than casting Asian American actors to play nondescript characters. Particularly for Asian Americans, whose stories are so often marginalized and misrepresented, true representation is about telling the wide range of Asian American experience. Visibility becomes most powerful when it goes beyond tokenization and into human moments, from removing splinters from chopsticks to driving past old memories on Irving Street. Representation is not the be-all, end-all of Asian American liberation from hegemony. For a long time, Asian American media presence was marked by misrepresentation, including yellowface and the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes. As we enter a new era of Asian American representation, these reflections of ourselves grant us the opportunity to see the stories history has rendered invisible for so long. For many, visibility allows us to see ourselves. Though Always Be My Maybe may follow several romantic comedy tropes, it holds up a mirror to the vast nuances in Asian American identity. It is through this mirror that we may be able to see the challenges we face as a community—for example, economic inequality, displacement, and colorism—and ultimately overcome them."