By Addie Tsai
Chapter 2: Racial Renovations: Isolation Asian/white Domesticity, and America’s Lifestyle Brand
“Too white to be Asian, too Asian to be white, the Asian American with white heritage comes across as both an outsider and an insider, belonging everywhere and nowhere, a form of isolation.” (72)
Fixer Upper’s Korean American Joanna Gaines within “racial renovation” (77) as a “story of assimilation only insofar as assimilation names a specific form of complicity: an intimacy with white supremacy.” Are there other mixed Asian figures in popular media and culture you would consider next to Gaines?
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.