AAPI Forever

This Memorial Day weekend has been a quiet one for me. Mostly because I have been working on my novel. Writing is a solitary activity, but I also don’t have that many words on the page to show for my three day weekend.

Why? Because, as most writers know, once you’ve shelved your writing in a drawer, you have to re-learn your characters, your tone, your voice. And, there also have been interruptions.

I just started Maureen Goo’s Throwback. It’s her latest novel, which involves a Freaky Friday/Back to the Future type event in which the main character gets thrown back into the 90s to repair bridges burned between her mom and grandma. Even though her characters are different in each of her novels, I’ve enjoyed every single one. I finished Goo’s The Way You Make Me Feel earlier this week for the second time. This time I listened to the audiobook and fell in love with Clara and LA and food trucks all over again. (And craving Korean-Brazilian food like nobody’s business.) In fact, I couldn’t wait until I was driving again (when I listen to audiobooks), so I checked out the book in cloud library to finish up the last chapters.

I also watched the first five episodes of xo,Kitty, a spinoff of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys trilogy, while folding laundry and doing chores. And last night, the four of us finally sat down to ABC, the Disney series adaptation of Gene Leun Yang’s graphic novel, American Born Chinese. I admit that I have been meaning to read the graphic novel for years and that the trailer for the series surprised me because I hadn’t realized there would be fantasy/mythological elements to it. It was a pleasant surprise for my kids too and in the first two episodes there was a lot of laughter going on in our living room.

ABC is such a great crossover of so many things: a cross-cultural identity, a fantastical quest, a coming-of-age. Last night I kept trying to come up with words for the crossovers: realistic second generation experience x fantasy, sitcom x adventure, throwback racist stereotypes meeting modern day social justice. Every time I cringed thinking ‘they won’t go there’, they did. And every time I looked over to my kids to see if they ‘got it’, they did.

Jin’s story is all of our stories. Even if I didn’t grow up the same way he did, I can relate to it so much. And I see that my kids—who are mixed Asian and white*—they get it too. (Filipino-Chinese-Italian-Russian-German-Irish-Portuguese-and-something-else-I’m-likely-forgetting)

And while I was reading Throwback this afternoon, in which there is a special connection between the main character and her grandma, it hit me. This weekend, I happened to be reading/watching/writing so many various projects that happened to have Asian-Americans as the lead characters. It made me smile and feel seen. It’s not just for AAPI month, but there are so many reasons why representation matters.