We Finally Got Some Asian-American Content & I Want More

Pic sources: 1, 2, 3

Summer 2018 felt like the summer of Asian-American women dominating rom-coms, between Lucy Liu in Set It Up (June), Lana Condor and the Song-Covey sisters in To All the Boys I've Loved Before (Aug), and of course, the entire cast of Crazy Rich Asians (Aug). It still kills me that I didn’t get to see Crazy Rich Asians in theaters, though I was in Spain that whole month so I suppose I can’t really complain.

Since then Netflix has also blessed us with:

• Always Be My Maybe (May 31, 2019)

• To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, the sequel (Feb 12, 2020)

• Tigertail (April 12, 2020) -- still haven’t watched this yet, oops 

• Never Have I Ever TV series (April 27, 2020)

• The Half Of It (May 1, 2020)

Of course there’s been other non-Netflix content (e.g., The Big Sick, The Farewell, Fresh Off the Boat, etc.) but these are just on my mind. 

What I’d like to see more of: 

• Asian-American children of immigrants who aren’t “confused” by their identities or trying to shed their cultural backgrounds; they, like, embrace their heritage?

• As Kara Brown tweeted: Interracial relationships that don’t involve a white person, a la Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae in The Lovebirds

• Fun fact, there are different types of Asians (I’m obviously joking but kinda not). What about a coming-of-age rom-com where a Chinese-American teen and Japanese-American teen fall in love and have to deal with their families’ shit? Or maybe they get together and it’s not a problem at all?? I should write both of these as YA novels, get movie deals, make it big.

• Asian-American boys and men as leads and love interests! Fuck stereotypes. Henry Golding is beautiful and guess what, there are so many more Asian-American men who are swoon-worthy deserve lead roles. Have you seen Manny Jacinto? Lin-Manuel Miranda has.

• Karen Chee once fan-casted an all-Asian remake of Pride & Prejudice in this iconic tweet. I think about it all the time.

Honestly, it’s very possible that this content already exists but I just don’t know about it; I admit to not knowing everything about everything. If it does exist, please tell me about it in the comments!