Asian Americans

A gravestone. Massive rocks. A mouldy qipao that has been sitting in an attic for 80 years. Among the challenges for America’s hundred or so private museums devoted to showcasing Chinese culture is how to turn down beloved donations from the public. This is just one of the hurdles Chinese-American museums face as they increase in number and prominence in line with the community. Even as the soon-to-officially-open Chinese American Museum in Washington scrambles for artefacts to fill out its collection, established museums routinely turn away old postcards, souvenirs from some recent holiday in China or dusty statues of obscure deities – without hurting prospective donors’ feelings. “Someone’

In 1992, I was abandoned as a baby and found in a public place in Hefei, China. For almost two years, I lived in an orphanage and with a foster mother. Then my adoptive mother flew me to Sacramento, California, where I grew up. My existence here in the United States is due to China’s infamous one-child policy, which was imposed for more than three decades before it was eased to a two-child policy in 2015.  I am one of more than 90,000 children adopted from China and raised in the US between 1992 and 2018.  About 40,000 other children went to families in the Netherlands, Spain and Britain. In her devastating poem, One Art, Elizabeth Bishop writes of loss in a way I relate to. She describes mi

This hotel room in West Hollywood, dimly lit with the curtains drawn, shows no signs of film-star excess. No half-full bottles of flat champagne, no overflowing ashtrays. No powder-flecked mirrors on the countertops. No cracks in the plasma television.  Just some fresh clothes folded neatly over a chair and, on the table in front of us, a Nintendo Switch and a big bag of sour candies. And anyway, its occupant isn’t exactly a film star. At least not yet. Thirty-year-old Simu Liu clears off a spot on the couch and apologizes for the mess.  This room – what a TripAdvisor review might deem “perfectly adequate” – has been his home for the past few months. The only clues Liu has spent that time in

Wang Newton is a drag king and comedian based in New York City. She is one of the very few Asian-American “kings” in the US. Wang, who moved to the US from Taiwan at the age of five, has also performed on stages across Asia, including Taipei. She talks about life as a drag king in an industry dominated by queens.

Comedian Ali Wong entered my life this summer when I desperately needed her. I had returned to work three months after the birth of my fourth child. In a routine familiar to many working moms, every few hours, I excused myself to go to the nursing room to pump. Somehow, I got the idea to watch something funny as I pumped to boost my supply. It worked! For many weeks, I watched Wong’s two stand-up Netflix specials Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife on a loop.  Last week, the talented Chinese-Vietnamese-American performer released her first book Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life.  The book is framed as a series of essays to her two daughters. Wong isn’t

Asian-American performers are applauding Saturday Night Live’s decision to drop stand-up comedian Shane Gillis after footage of him making racial slurs against Chinese people resurfaced. Joe Wong, a bilingual Chinese-American comic who works in both countries, told Inkstone that the firing was a significant step because discrimination against Asians, often stereotyped as “model minorities” in the US, was often disregarded by the establishment. “Their attitude is ‘not you too,’ meaning ‘we have enough black people, Hispanics and Jews to deal with, not you Asians. Just be quiet,’” he said. “I feel SNL made the right decision firing him. I do not want to be grateful for that because that’s what