Crazy Rich Asians is being touted as the hit romantic comedy of the summer and a cultural win for Asian-Americans, but not everyone feels that way; the dialogue surrounding this charming and effervescent rom-com has been divisive and complicated.

The criticism Crazy Rich Asians has received for its promotion of the model minority myth and moments of anti-blackness are completely valid, but we also need to be realistic about the role pop culture plays in pushing a truly progressive agenda and the timeline in which that agenda unfolds.

As a poor, fat, queer, mixed Filipina-American, I didn’t relate to Crazy Rich Asians either, but as a person who studied film and works in the entertainment industry, I know better than to look for my story in the mainstream. This movie is not all of Asian American representation. It’s the introductory course that gets Hollywood interested in more complex lessons about our community.

It’s easy to focus our hatred on a tangible product rather than at the larger system. The Joy Luck Club was the last major American film with a majority Asian American cast and it was released 25 years ago. This film too—which is decidedly more serious and more relatable to a larger group of Asian-Americans, continues to receive hypercritical ire for not doing “enough” for the community. But Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, and Kevin Kwan, the author of Crazy Rich Asians, have a responsibility as artists to share their truth—however small a slice of truth that is—and it’s unfair to demand that these singular pieces of art speak on behalf of all of Asian America.

This is a complex community—representing 21,655,368 individuals with ancestral ties from over 40 countries— comprised of multiple ethnic groups, social classes, and intersectional experiences.

We need to be realistic about the role pop culture plays in pushing a truly progressive agenda and the timeline in which that agenda unfolds.
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When Kwan wrote Crazy Rich Asians, he was drawing from his experience as a wealthy Singaporean-American. In a video op-ed for Harper’s Bazaar titled “These are the Real Crazy Rich Asians,” Kevin Kwan says, “How much of my book is based on reality? About 150% of it.” This is the world he lives and knows. For Kwan to write a book based on any other Asian-American experience, but his own would be hollow and disingenuous. To expect more denies the validity of his experience and sets a dangerous precedent for other marginalized writers.

We already have to hide certain facets of our identities when navigating this bigoted world, we shouldn’t have to hide our truth from our own communities. All art deserves criticism, but it’s important to evaluate where that criticism is coming from. Our community’s resentment with Crazy Rich Asians and The Joy Luck Club has less to do with the actual films and more to do with the painful truth that Hollywood continues to deny our multicultural and multifaceted existence.

Crazy Rich Asians was never going to be a radical criticism of capitalism, white colonialism, and racism in the United States. The gatekeepers of Hollywood benefit from upholding those systems; to take aim at these systems would take aim at their own power. Despite its self-purported  progressive reputation, Hollywood is a business—a business that made $11.7 billion in 2017—and is still keenly focused on making a profit. And that profit is believed to stem from a film’s ability appeal to the whiter—ahem, wider—American audience.

The disillusionment felt by many Asian-Americans shows that marginalized people are hungry for representation in Hollywood and that they don’t fully understand the trials of filmmaking in a system as bigoted and bureaucratic as Hollywood’s.

There are three major parts to the film production process,  and a film can die at any of these points: Development, Production, and Distribution. For a major motion picture, every step of this process can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This goes to pay writers, talent, crew, executives, lawyers, and everyone else involved in the making of the film as well as costs for costuming, location, and props.

It’s impossible to find out how many scripts get passed over by the power players in entertainment, but here are figures from a small facet of the industry.  The Black List is a “an annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays” founded by Franklin Leonard, a Black Hollywood executive that wanted to get the industry to take chances on scripts that kept getting passed over. Along with the annual survey, the Black List has become a place where unrepresented writers can get feedback and industry eyes on their work.

The Black List “has hosted more than 55,000 screenplays and teleplays” since it started and of those 55,000 only 338 were put into production. Only 6% of the movies that were hosted on the site made it into production, and that’s coming from a place that wants writers to succeed.

With Crazy Rich Asians, the source material was already there in Kwan’s bestselling book. In August 2013, Nina Jacobson, the founder of the production company Color Force, bought the adaptation rights to Crazy Rich Asians only 2 months after the book was released. Once the rights were bought, it would be logical for production to start soon after. Well, that’s when the production entered its personal “Development Hell”— an industry term for a project that’s stuck in the development stage for years.

Crazy Rich Asians didn’t start production until 2017 for many different reasons, including a scheduling conflict with lead actress Constance Wu, due to her role on Fresh off the Boat. Roadblocks like this aren’t uncommon for productions, especially feature films. All of the normal struggles that a feature film faces—script, crew, actor changes, going over-budget, licensing issues, etc.—are heightened when the film centers on people of color. It is a lot easier to say no to a film that doesn’t have a profitable precedent, so it’s remarkable that people kept saying yes to Crazy Rich Asians at all.

As a poor, fat, queer, mixed Filipina-American, I know better than to look for my story in the mainstream.
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When people see Crazy Rich Asians in theaters, the logos of the production companies flash before their eyes and the first few names aren’t recognizable to most American moviegoers—SK Global (made up of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, and Ivanhoe Pictures), Color Force, and Starlight Culture Entertainment. The last logo to fill up the screen is the iconic Warner Bros. Studios shield, with the words “Distributed By” above it. This demarcation as distributor—and not as a production company—is extremely important.

Jacobson knew that if she wanted to make Crazy Rich Asians a reality, she would have to go outside the American studio system for funding, hence the partnership with Ivanhoe Pictures, a U.S.-based Asian film investment group. Starlight Culture Entertainment, one of the other production companies involved, is a giant Hong Kong investment company with stakes in multiple industries aside from entertainment, including chemicals, environmental protection products, and gambling. These production companies are the ones that believed in Crazy Rich Asians.

They are the ones that work on adapting the material and creating a package (attaching a director and producer to a script to make it more marketable). They are the ones that bring their creative assets to distribution companies to get more funding and guarantee that people will get a chance to see it.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. and Netflix were the two distributors that the creative team behind Crazy Rich Asians had to choose between. Kwan and Jon Chu, the film’s director had to make the final decision. They ultimately chose to go with Warner Bros., despite the lesser offer, because they wanted the cultural impact of a theater release.

As a traditional distributor, Warner Bros. backs the project and sends it out to their distribution channels— theaters, rentals, and personal copies—hoping to make a profit (or at least their investment back) in ticket, DVD, BluRay, and digital download sales. Warner Bros. shares of the profit come back to them, so they can continue the cycle with another film.

The disillusionment felt by many Asian-Americans shows that they don’t fully understand the trials of filmmaking in a system as bigoted and bureaucratic as Hollywood’s.
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It’s not shocking that Netflix was willing to give Crazy Rich Asians a trilogy deal right off the bat. Netflix, and other digital subscription based distributors, have taken more chances on projects that feature marginalized characters than traditional studios because of their business model. They don’t have to gamble on ticket sales to make their money back—they already have a well of money from subscription fees to draw from. But if Kevin Kwan and John Chu had chosen the initial Netflix payday over Warner Bros. smaller budget, Crazy Rich Asians wouldn’t be a cultural touchstone that sold out theaters for multiple weeks.

The initial goal of any film is to make the backers’ investment back, but the stakes are even higher with minority-lead films. The experiences of people of color are automatically politicized, and subsequently othered. Studio executives don’t think general (i.e. white) audiences will relate to characters of color. They don’t believe that the stories of marginalized communities will succeed (even when it’s been proven they will time and time again).

Girls Trip was only given a $20 million budget (even with the star power of Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish) and it ended up making $140 million gross—seven times its budget back. Warner Bros. believed in Crazy Rich Asians enough to back it, but gave it a relatively small budget of $30 million considering the high-profile actors and the lavish backdrops, costumes, and set pieces that the story demands. In its first two weeks, Crazy Rich Asians, more than doubled its budget in box office revenue, proving that it wasn’t such a risky bet after all.

The American film industry has largely failed us since its inception in 1907, and will continue to fail the most marginalized of us. Supporting major releases—even begrudgingly—helps convince major studios and distributors to bet on more of our stories. All the odds were stacked against Crazy Rich Asians—a fun, apolitical, rom-com with light-skinned Asians that speak King’s English. It took years of community building and pushing against Hollywood gatekeepers to get this film made. It took allies with power to bet their good standing in the industry on the stories of people of color. It took the cultural groundwork of The Joy Luck Club, Fresh off the Boat, and every bit of honest representation in between.

If people still aren’t content with our victories in the mainstream, seek out and support the underground! There ARE independent filmmakers making the most brown, queer, anti-capitalist Asian-American films you can imagine—like the 2017 short film Salamagan (dir.  Elisah Oh) currently on the film festival circuit.

Organizations like CAAM, CAPE, Kore, and 18 Million Rising, are dedicated to uplifting diverse Asian-American artists through funding, fellowships, film festivals, screenings, and promotion through social media. CAAM’s film festivals feature some of the biggest names in Asian-American entertainment right alongside new talent (and they’re taking submissions right now!)

Many of these organizations have events with actors, writers, directors, and producers at all talent levels because they are meant to uplift our community through art and mentorship. I urge you to take all your anger, disappointment, and pain at Hollywood and Crazy Rich Asians and put that energy into artists and projects you want to see succeed.

Kwan told his story with Crazy Rich Asians. Now, let’s go share our own.

The debate around cultural appropriation, especially when it involves Asian culture, almost always follows a specific pattern. Let’s take the recent qipao debacle as an example.

1. White American high school student Keziah is called out by Asians in the West for wearing a qipao to prom.
2. Articles are written quoting some Asians in Asia who do not see this as cultural appropriation.
3. Westerners, Asians and non-Asians alike, use articles like these to claim that Asians in Asia live “within a nearly monolithic society where [they] are represented in media” so of course they won’t care.
4. Rinse and repeat.

Every round of this pattern deeply infuriates me, as an “Asian in Asia” (more specifically, a Malaysian of Bangladeshi parentage, though I now live overseas as an adult migrant). These thinkpieces and counter-thinkpieces homogenize a massive continent of about 40-something countries, cherry-picking segments of opinions to remove any possibility of nuance around how Asians in Asia view cultural appropriation.

I grew up as part of a highly vilified racial minority in an Asian country. My first experiences of institutional and interpersonal racism were not in Australia or the United States, but as a child in Malaysia, where the only “media representation” I had of my race was in front-page news articles about how we’re supposedly robbing houses and stealing women. In Malaysia I was, and still am, barred from services, opportunities, and even jobs due to my race. I was refused on-screen time while working in the media in Malaysia for being too “dark-skinned” and yet nailed a TV hosting gig in Australia. Claims that Asians live in some sort of racially homogenous paradise impose a Western Orientalist view of the “Homelands,” ignore the existence of diaspora, and assume that none of us ever suffer and thus our opinions on the use of our culture are irrelevant.

Of course, I am just one Asian, I can’t possibly speak for the whole continent. So I’ve reached out to other Asians, either in Asia or who’ve lived overseas as adults, about the issue of appropriation. And our opinions are much more complex than Western media wants to admit.

These thinkpieces and counter-thinkpieces homogenize a massive continent of about 40-something countries.
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Sabina Giado, a Sri Lankan writer who grew up in Dubai and is currently based in Sydney, defines cultural appropriation as “taking someone’s cultural artifacts without their consent and profiting from it, whether that is in actual money or fame or some other intangible benefit. Communication, much like any conversation, happens with the consent of both parties….Appropriation usually flows from up to down — as in a more powerful culture takes on the trappings of a less powerful one.”

There seemed to be an overall consensus that cultural appropriation was bad; the differences were in what they felt constituted cultural appropriation. Sylvie, a Malaysian student based in the United Kingdom, argued that people are too quick to name things appropriative. “I think we are in an interconnected world where cultures naturally intertwine with another, giving us the opportunity to diversify our understanding of various cultures. So I think cultural appropriation is an unnecessary label that the people of the West have created to further complicate cultural diversification.”

Jo, a South Indian Christian development professional and “perpetual immigrant,” also has major qualms with the definition of cultural appropriation. “There definitely needs to be more framing of it in terms of power relations between communities and defining why those power relations exist in material terms,” she says, “as well as a conversation about where cultural appropriation is actually about something else (bog standard racism, imperialism and the capitalist commodification of exotic cultures for consumption).”

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One common assumption fueling the idea that Asians in Asia can’t understand cultural appropriation is that Asian countries are monocultures — that everyone in China is Chinese, everyone in the Philippines is Filipino, and nobody understands what it’s like to live as a racial minority. “Give me a second to stop laughing my ass off at the idea that Asians (and Indians, specifically) aren’t racist as fuck,” says Tamanna, who grew up in India and recently moved to France. “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, and they fail to take into account the effect of colonization and the pervasive effect of white supremacy outside the Western world. And if I’m being cynical I’d say they’re an attempt at twisting the facts to make White people feel better about themselves.”

One anonymous Malaysian writer of Chinese descent said she twitched at the suggestion. “Anyone who calls any Asian country a monoculture really, really needs to go hang out in Asia for a while? Because every country’s built of a multiplicity of ethnic groups, even if they’re not immediately obvious to outsiders.”

Indeed, for countries like Malaysia or Singapore, multiculturalism is baked into the cultural consciousness to the point that it becomes a marketing slogan — “Malaysia Truly Asia.” Many respondents from those areas recounted their experiences of cultural exchange: joining in on cultural holidays, eating each other’s food and wearing each other’s clothes — in ways that they are now reluctant to embrace in the West, lest they be accused of being appropriators themselves.

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“I have [a qipao] that I wore to an International Day when I was in high school — ’cause as Malaysians, we are so multicultural I figured I could, as well as having Chinese family members,” said Shamita S., an artist and “third culture kid Malaysian” based in Australia. “I would love to crack it out again cause it’s beautiful, but alas I’m scared to offend, haha!”

Shamita was salty about the prospect of being called out by White Australians for potential appropriation: “I think it comes from the classic white saviour complex. I know intentions are good but…stay out of it unless you actually know what you’re talking about.” When it comes to the possibility of offending Chinese people in Australia, however, her feelings were more complex.

“I don’t think it’d offend newer Chinese Australians. I think it may offend ‘Australians with Chinese descent’ who have been very much Australianized for several generations. It seems to be a pattern with us POCs — that the less connected to our culture we are, the more defensive we get if someone seemingly appropriates an element of it,” she says. “When I’ve spoken to first-gen migrants, or, for example, ‘Chinese people living in China,’ they’ve always been so like ‘YES GO FOR IT.’ Which makes me wonder — why is it people who are further removed from their culture are so much more defensive? Is it because they want to protect something that they too are still learning about and it perhaps comes from some form of self-judgement or questioning of their own identity?”

The qipao debacle itself was a polarising item of discussion. “I would say the qipao girl was wrong, and I agree with the people calling her out for it — wearing it as a costume is denigrating,” says Robert Liow, a Malaysian-Chinese with Singaporean permanent residency, residing in the UK. “I can see why some Asians in Asia think any acknowledgement of their culture is positive; we don’t often get to see ourselves in Western media or interact with the West in a contributory way, and don’t immediately experience racism in the way that Asians living in the West do.”

Multiculturalism doesn’t mean full racial equity, or that issues like cultural appropriation and racism don’t exist in Asian countries. Growing up amidst immense anti-Bangladeshi racism in Malaysia, whose constitution is based on Ketuanan Melayu or Malay Supremacy, meant being surrounded by messaging about how Bangladeshis were “destroying our culture” and “doing Islam wrong” because we wore henna or salwhar khameez, when Malay people could do the same without question. And yet when minorities like myself speak up, “multiculturalism” gets used as a cudgel to shut us down.

Multiculturalism doesn’t mean that issues like cultural appropriation don’t exist in Asian countries.
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“I have faced racist Malays growing up and I think that’s made me somewhat protective of Desi culture, and I can’t help feel a bit uncomfortable when Malay people take and take without crediting where it came from,” says an anonymous Malaysian student of Filipino, Indian, and Pakistani background, citing the controversy surrounding Malay fashion designer Rizalman Ibrahim’s Indian-based fashion line, which didn’t feature any Indian models. “Many local Desis weren’t too happy about our culture being used like that, especially due to the xenophobia that many have faced from Malays. These complaints were invalidated by a lot of people though on the basis that Malaysia is multicultural and we ‘borrow’ from each others culture anyway. On one hand I agree, but where do we draw the line?”

The non-obvious multiplicity of ethnic groups exists even in countries that don’t necessarily have multiculturalism baked into their cultural consciousness (the way Malaysia and Singapore do) — and, just like Asian Diaspora in the West, these ethnic groups face structural discrimination and appropriation.

Michael, a Taiwanese stay-at-home dad who’s lived in New Zealand and the United States, spoke about the “more or less four ethnicities” in Taiwan and the way they’re (mis)treated — such as the neglect and abuse of Aboriginal Taiwanese or the purges of the Hakka, “gypsies from China” that retreated to the mountains after disenfranchisement from local Taiwanese. “Hakkas being a minority tend to serve central government,” he says.“Whenever there’s rebellions or strife, they get purged by local government and rebels. Sort of like Jewish people in Poland.” (The other two groups are the majority Minan Taiwanese and “mainlanders” that escaped China after communist control.)

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“So all the racial issues in the US — not new. At all. Our societies are even older than US,” says Michael. “Chinese history is filled with genocide and mass killing.”

A country that gets called out often as being monocultural is Japan. Controversy over incidents such as “Kimono Wednesdays” at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston’s “Looking East” exhibition tends to paint Japanese people in Japan as being oblivious or uncaring to cultural appropriation. Asuma, who’s half Japanese half Bangladeshi and works in marketing in New Zealand, says the truth is more complicated.

“I think ‘people don’t care about cultural appropriation’ because most Japanese people hold the idea that Japanese culture isn’t comprehensible to most ‘foreigners.’ There’s an unfounded sense of pride in being Japanese, and when people from other cultures don’t understand it, they don’t really care,” she says. “I see cultural appropriation as lack of effort to understand and respect a culture, and because Japanese people already so strongly believe that people just won’t understand anyway, and are okay with it, they don’t recognize what cultural appropriation is.”

The concerns of Asians in the West often overtake those of Asians back in or from Asia, due to cultural dominance of the West overall, even though Asians in the West claim that the voices of the other side are supposedly “overtaking” discourse over cultural appropriation — such as this Tumblr post from Kaagaz Kalam saying “Honestly folks back home in South Asia need to stop with the whole ‘cultural appropriation doesn’t bother me.’” This becomes a weird kind of neo-imperialism: enforcing the Western view of our home cultures, while claiming that we shouldn’t have a voice in how our culture is being used, because supposedly we don’t know what it’s like to be a minority or not be represented.

The concerns of Asians in the West often overtake those of Asians back in or from Asia.
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There’s also the issue of where cultural appropriation ranks as a problem. According to Kristina, cultural appropriation takes a backseat to other problems in the Philippines, particularly amongst those who are poorer. “People [in the Philippines] can’t see [cultural appropriation], they really can’t, they’re too busy trying to get out of poverty to take a step back and look at the social issues,” she says.

“To be honest, everyone already has their own problems to deal with, especially with government corruption in the Philippines and stuff, but would Western Diaspora Asians care about Our problem in the Old Country — that’s the question I want to ask,” says an anonymous Indonesian artist in Jakarta. “I can’t say for certain whether or not people should care, but before Western Diaspora can say that, they should actually individually look at their home country and see what issues they are facing. Not to guilt them or anything, but for perspective. Myself, since I am educated in the West I understand their problem and how they feel. But since I AM living here I am also seeing shit like arts education getting zero funding… Not to mention Islam extremism rising in Indonesia, unfair imprisonment of Basuki Tjahja Purnama, and so on. So [the problem of cultural appropriation] IS the last thing on my mind.”

Sangeetha Thanapal, anti-racism activist based in Melbourne, says that power relations between the Global North and South cause this divide. In contrast to Kristina and the Indonesian artist, she does feel like those in the Global South, at least those who are tuned in to social justice discourse in the West, end up caring about cultural appropriation a lot, because it’s what the West prioritizes. “I think if we truly are looking for liberation, we need to start seeing these issues as interconnected. The power structures that hurt us in Singapore also hurt people in Australia and also hurt people in America. Everyone’s got our own problems yes, but we also have similar problems. Or sometimes we have different problems from the same source (colonialism). I think saying we’ve all got to deal with our shit first is going to perpetuate that. I just don’t think that’s realistic.”

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Sangeetha recently wrote about the culturally monolithic and unrepresentative portrayal of Singapore in Crazy Rich Asians — a fairly common complaint amongst other Singaporeans. (I too found the trailer frustrating as someone who grew up next door to Singapore: Where’s the Singlish? The accent? The NON-CHINESE?) This contrasts the responses of those in the West, including Asian diaspora, who are calling the movie a “gamechanger” for Asian representation — “the Asian Black Panther.” This is what Michael calls “snapshotting” — overseas diaspora seeing a static view of the “Homelands,” while those within experience the country’s “permanent state of flux.”

Ultimately, Asians in or from Asia wished Asians want the West to understand about our experiences with cultural appropriation: our reactions are based on cultural context, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t experienced colonialism, racism, or oppression.

“Asians in Western countries experience the difficulties that come with white supremacy, whereas Asians back in Asia live in different and often quite complex societies with centuries old histories of negotiating race between Asian groups,” says Spoon, a Chinese-English Malaysian historian in Melbourne. “I’m not even sure the category Asian is meaningful when discussing Asia.”

For Nana, a Malay writer in Kuala Lumpur, her wishes are simple. “I wish that they would look at us with a kinder, non-condescending lens. To know that we are dealing with our issues that may not be similar to theirs in our own way. We’re learning a lot from them, but we are also capable of teaching them a thing or two.”

Jessica Huang’s friendship with a white neighbor centers the Asian-American experience in a way I’d never seen before on TV.

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The season 1 finale of Fresh Off the Boat solidified Jessica Huang as one of my favorite characters on the air today. At the start of the episode, Jessica holds a dish of macaroni and cheese with bacon bits and panics that she and her immigrant family have assimilated too much and too quickly to the United States. The rest of the episode centers on this dilemma and what it means for the Chinese culture she treasures so dearly. This sort of crisis was one I had never seen before on mainstream television, particularly from an Asian American character. Now wrapping up season four, Jessica still challenges the Asian narratives I’d seen before, particularly the Asian BFF trope.

Growing up, when I saw any Asian woman or girl on TV, even as an extra, my head would snap to attention. Even if I didn’t consciously think about representation at the time, the lack of Asian characters was obvious, and made me internalize our invisibility even more. As a Korean adopted into a white family, the characters I saw on TV were some of the most intimate looks I had at Asian American family life. Living in a mostly white neighborhood, my friendships mirrored those I saw on TV — friendships like Rory Gilmore and Lane Kim’s on Gilmore Girls or, later, Meredith Grey and Cristina Yang’s on Grey’s Anatomy; I, too, was the only Asian friend among a group of white peers. However, it wasn’t until recently that I realized all these friendships were of a kind. They enforced the Asian BFF trope — and warped my perceptions of my own racial identity.

Similar to the trope of the “sassy black friend,” the Asian BFF is an often-tokenized attempt to include a person of color on screen. The Asian BFF rejects her Asian heritage, and the character’s identity revolves around attempts to emulate whiteness. Lane Kim was in a band, dated white men, and was even kicked out of her home by her tough Korean mother who tried to keep her steady on the Christian path towards a nice Korean husband. Similarly, Cristina Yang’s surgical career is in defiance of her own Korean mother’s traditional wishes. Yang is a confident, rounded character but her ethnicity is rarely mentioned — her character wasn’t even supposed to be Asian in the first place.

The Asian BFF rejects her Asian heritage, and the character’s identity revolves around attempts to emulate whiteness.

In attempts to perhaps avoid stereotypes, the Asian BFF trend creates new ones about the assimilated, rebellious Asian-American woman and her persistent efforts to gain access to white culture and spaces. There is nothing inherently wrong with these character’s quests for identities separate from the ones in which they grew up. It’s downright expected for coming-of-age stories. I saw much of my own artistic drive reflected in Lane Kim, and I saw the unwavering support my friends have for my ambitions reflected in Meredith Grey. But when encouragement to break away from one’s culture and join the “American” (read: white) culture is all we see, inadvertently or not, it pushes the narrative that Asian-ness is “less than” or undesirable. According to a recent study, even on shows with Asian-Americans and Pacific-Islanders (AAPIs) as regulars, these characters rarely get storylines that explore AAPI-related issues.

Fresh Off the Boat is different. Jessica Huang, played with sharp-edged heart by Constance Wu, is unapologetically both Chinese and an immigrant, packing noodles in her children’s lunches, dressing up as Chinese Santa, and taking the family to Taiwan for the summer. Jessica’s comfort and pride in her Asian identity alienates her from her white, cliquish neighbors (who today would definitely be part of the 53% of white women who voted for Trump). At one neighborhood gathering, Jessica passes around a plate of “stinky tofu” only to have the plate return to her fuller than it started. She starts to succumb to the pressures to fit in, pretending to be interested in what these women are interested in without reciprocity. Finally, she does find a best friend in next-door neighbor Honey, who is also alienated from the neighborhood clique due to her status as trophy wife. This friendship flips the Asian BFF trope on its head in more than one way.

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First, despite Honey’s fulfillment of Western leading lady beauty standards, it’s Jessica who is the confident leader in their friendship, while Honey is often passive and meek. In one episode, Jessica serenades Honey with a rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” and when a touched Honey tries to join in, Jessica pushes her away, reminding her that “this is not a duet.” Honey stumbles away passively as Jessica continues to bask, centerstage. Jessica is not only no white woman’s backup singer, she’s also a strict soloist.

Beyond this dynamic, Honey values the parts of Jessica that she loves most about herself, including her culture. In fact, it’s this that makes Jessica realize how much Honey’s friendship means to her. At one point, worried what being friends with the neighborhood outcast will do for their floundering restaurant business, Jessica’s husband tells her she can be friends with anyone else. “Swing a cat, hit a white woman,” he says. And yet this proves harder than it sounds as the women of the neighborhood whisper that Jessica’s brownies are sliced so evenly because of communism — she will always be the perpetual foreigner to them.

Meanwhile, Honey eats Jessica’s stinky tofu with gusto, a small but symbolic act. While I’ve seen strong interracial female friendships before, witnessing a white woman take an interest in and support Asian culture without it becoming a spectacle or exoticized felt special. Instead of the familiar assimilation narrative, I watched Honey willingly enter Jessica’s space and find room for herself in the life of a Chinese woman who loves who she is and where she’s from. Yes, I certainly identified with Jessica in this moment, but I also saw myself reflected in the neighborhood women and Honey. For so long I had shunned a part of myself because I thought it was less important. But thanks to new narratives like this one, the voices of the neighborhood women have faded into Honey’s, affirming that the tofu is delicious — that the entirety of me matters.

With this foundation in place, the question becomes: Where will their friendship go and how deeply will it tackle their differences? The season four premiere centered on Jessica and Honey as they took on Best Friends Week on Wheel of Fortune. Different expectations about how long Jessica and her family will stay at Honey’s home while Jessica negotiates their lease cause conflict that comes to a head in front of the wheel. Honey explains that she told Jessica to stay as long as she wanted only because of her southern politeness, while Jessica reveals that, where she’s from, you don’t have to thank family. The episode ends on an emphatically cheesy note as the women make up, yet Honey’s unblinking acceptance of Jessica’s reasoning never diminishes Jessica’s upbringing or invalidates her explanation.

This moment illustrates the show’s potential to explore the challenges of interracial female friendship while maintaining its mainstream appeal (which gives it the power to reach a broad, white audience). It can stay lighthearted while still challenging the assumption that Honey will be an unwavering white ally to Jessica. I’m glad to see Honey eat the tofu and accept Jessica’s cultural norms, but I also want to see what she does when she’s the accidental perpetuator of casual racism, or when a rich client implies they would rather work with Honey than Jessica. At a time when white female allyship with women of color is under scrutiny, the show has a chance to participate in the conversation through the unique dynamic it has created between these two women.

Arthur Dong’s Films Spotlight Asian American And Queer History

The development of my racial identity is still something I grapple with as an adult. Everything I saw for so long in books, TV, and movies showed being Asian as something to rebel against or ignore, but if friendships like Jessica and Honey’s existed back then, maybe I would have seen that part of myself differently instead of falling in line with the single story. Maybe I would have bristled when my friends told me I was “pretty much white.” Maybe they would have known better than to say that in the first place.

The existence of the Jessica-Honey friendship still means something to me today. It means there’s space that can be cleared for us at center stage. It shows how our white friends can and should support the sometimes challenging efforts to stay true to ourselves. Simply, it’s refreshing to see the lives of nice white women take a backseat to our own lives — and that they might even be off screen somewhere, forgotten for an entire episode, as we live and grow and love ourselves all on our own.

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