Take thirty seconds to name as many major Asian characters on the American small screen as you can. Got a list? Good. Now subtract any characters that are/have tiger moms (sorry, Jessica Huang!), have a thick foreign accent (remember Apu from The Simpsons?), or fall under any other toxic Asian stereotypes. How many characters do
“I am an eighteen-year-old, second generation Asian-American. For too long, writing, language meant division—a disconnect. As the daughter of immigrants, it meant a barrier between myself and those closest to me. My Mandarin is too facile to carry on anything more than a superficial conversation. My mother once said that we are constantly, “grasping at