Clip of the Week: Excluding the Voices of Asian-American Women

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month where we celebrate Asian history in America and around the globe. Asians are the largest racial population in the entire world and comprise of nearly 6% of America’s population, but in the States, their representation in the media is close to invisible. There have been just two television shows with primarily Asian-American casts— Fresh Off the Boat and All-American Girl— and the upcoming “Crazy Rich Asians,” based on Kevin Kwan’s popular novel, is one of few all-Asian major motion pictures produced by an American studio and directed by an Asian American. Even our history books barely touch upon Asian history to the scope European history is. While the diaspora has been existing in America for centuries, the lack of representation and knowledge of Asian heritage as part of American discourse has contributed to marginalization and stereotypes that are still palpable today.

In this Clip of the Week, Jenn Fang of Reappropriate sits with Lydia Stetson in Connecting Voices to talk about the frequent exclusion of Asian-Americans in our history lessons, confronting model minority stereotypes, and what feminism looks like for Asian-American women. Instead of taking a backseat in history and in the media as the sidekick, Stetson and Fang talk about Asians taking the forefront in telling their own narratives. Watch the whole episode now.

​-- AK