By Addie Tsai
Permit me, if you will, a brief trip back to the 90s, before social media intensified the entitled position between a fan and their beloved celebrity without having to leave one’s home, before Hollywood and television studios learned they could exploit the ambiguity of exotic mixed Asians (with one white parent) to elevate what was, for all intents and purposes, a white story that satisfied an effort at diversity, before this particular kind of mixed Asian representation had become common enough that Gen Z made a new term (one I won’t claim, no matter who tries to make me)—wasian.
Back in the late 90s, when the Internet was still in its infant days, my brother and I would sit in his room while he perused the website mixedfolks.com, a catalogue of celebrities born of multiple races, seeking to find evidence of ourselves in the larger world around us. We squealed over our favorites—Keanu Reeves and Brandon Lee, hello!—and then gasped when we discovered celebrities that had been around for a while but about whom we had no idea, like Jennifer and Meg Tilly. I’d later learn that it was no accident we didn’t know the Tilly sisters were Chinese, as Meg has since expressed her misgivings about passing white:
Unfortunately, we were not raised to respect our Chinese history and tradition. My mother and father divorced in 1963, when I was three. My mother was quite bitter. She spoke very angrily about him and everything Chinese. If ever you did anything bad or selfish, it was ‘the Chinese coming out in you.’ We were told that we must never tell anyone that we were half Chinese, because if people knew they wouldn’t let their children play with us . . . The difficult part was growing up, feeling like I had to reject and deny and turn my back on half of what I was. The wonderful part is, that is behind me now. Things are different . . . You didn’t know I was Asian, because for many years, I had my mother’s warnings echoing in my ears. I didn’t tell anyone. I was grown, but still, I was scared. Thought it would limit me, the roles I would be offered. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I started to tell the people closest to me. When they didn’t run in horror, I got braver and spoke of it more. What a relief it was to finally acknowledge all of me.
Even as recently as 2010, actress Chloe Bennet anglicized her surname, from Wang to her father’s first name, citing her inability to cast roles with a Chinese name or being typecast into Asian American roles. She would, just like Tilly, grow towards an acknowledgment of her Asian American identity, such as when she played a mixed Asian detective in Hulu’s adaptation of Charles Yu’s novel, Interior Chinatown.
As it is said, Asian culture isn’t a monolith, and the same can be said for the vastness of the experiences of those who are born from an Asian and a white parent. As representation around mixed Asians, beyond those with white parents, continues to grow, monoracial witnesses from different backgrounds continue to scrutinize our position within our racial background and upbringing. But the cultural performance and authenticity of mixed Asians with white parents is particularly sifted through like sorting rice from a bucket of flour because of the complex history that Asianness already holds as a result of white supremacy and imperialism, both across Asia and the United States.
Whatever the case, one thing is clear: representation of mixed Asians with white parents, what author Anna Storti describes as Asian/white, is having a moment.
In Asian American literature, novels like Heated Rivalry and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, have centered depictions of mixed Asian characters. I, too, have written into this literature, in my queer Asian young adult novel, Dear Twin and my queer Asian Frankenstein retelling, Unwieldy Creatures. In media, the adaptation of Heated Rivalry, and the subsequent splash of Korean-Dutch actor Hudson Williams, has catapulted mixed Asian identity into the spotlight. Hudson Williams’ latest venture includes a star-studded cast of mixed Asian beauties, featured in the new music video for Laufey’s “Madwoman,” a kind of 1960s royalty fever dream.
I’d like to take the opportunity to explore the complexities surrounding mixed Asian representation, both in literature and in popular culture, by reading Anna Storti’s recently-released academic monograph, TORN: Asian/white Life and the Intimacy of Violence. Focusing specifically on Asian/white embodiment, Storti’s study considers “mixed race embodiment as a key site for understanding the magnitude of US empire and its role in such catastrophe.”
Come join me the month of May, where we’ll read a chapter a week (with some guiding questions/thoughts to frame your reading), culminating in a virtual discussion on June 11 at 7:00 p.m. EST.
Addie Tsai (any/all) is the author of Dear Twin (2019), included in American Library Association’s Rainbow List in 2021, Unwieldy Creatures (2022), a Shirley Jackson finalist for Best Novel, and Straight White Men Can’t Dance: American Masculinity in Film and Popular Culture. She collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. They are the founding editor in chief for just femme & dandy. Addie is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Creative Writing at William & Mary, where she is Affiliate Faculty in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies.