A Quote by Mary H.K. Choi

I love how British people call Asian people 'oriental' unless they're talking about Indian people, who get to be called Asian. — © Mary H.K. Choi
I love how British people call Asian people 'oriental' unless they're talking about Indian people, who get to be called Asian.
I'm definitely more Asian than a lot of people who have never been to Asia. But by blood and by race, they instantly say I deserve to be Asian. I've worked really hard to be Asian, and I think I'm Asian enough.
To put things back into perspective, back when we as people were struggling to survive through winters, or even through the night, I feel like there's a lot of whining about whether or not you use Asian or the words Asian or Oriental, and how it's going to offend somebody, I mean give me - I mean, just shut up.
A lot of 'Star Wars' fans who are specifically Asian never had a character they could dress up like, or they would, and people would always call them 'Asian Rey' or 'Asian fill-in-the-blank.'
We're at an interesting phase of Asian and Asian-American writing, where we might succeed in having readers look at us as creative individuals who write with fury and fire about the world, and in new ways, without having them say things like "I read a really good Indian book," or "That Malaysian fellow writes very well." So I hope by identifying as Indian I can get people who don't usually read "ethnic" or "Indian" literature to read that literature and enjoy it.
It was quite strange that people were saying I wasn't Asian enough. It's like, 'Oh, you're not Asian enough to play an Asian role.' So what does that mean for people who come from mixed heritage? I grew up in Asia; I'm Malaysian.
In British TV, if there is an Asian character, there usually has to be a reason for them to be Asian, whereas in America, you have a lot more roles where the person just happens to be Asian.
I sense a kind of fear of writing black or Asian characters from non-ethnic writers, who perhaps feel that they don't know the culture and therefore can't write about it. By and large, if there's an Asian character, I might get a call. But if the character is called 'Philip,' the chances are I won't.
The fact is, I'm half-British, half-Malaysian. For an Asian who's grown up in America to be commenting on how Asian I am when they've never left America... does that make them more or less Asian than me?
I hope that when people see Asian women, they realize we are all different. A lot of time with Caucasian people, they just group us together as Asian. But even with different cities in China, people have different personalities... We look Asian, but we still look different. We don't look the same.
Does people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe in it as its own literary tradition, because your race plays a great factor in how you are seen by the world, and how you see the world; the fact that I'm an Asian American isn't incidental to who I am as a writer. Where it becomes difficult is defining what, if anything identifiable at all, makes an Asian American book an Asian American book, other than the fact of its creator being Asian. And I'd argue that there is nothing identifiable beyond that.
I think now you see a lot more British films from the perspective of, I guess what would be considered "new" British people - people of color, Asian people. I think that's what's happening now, whereas 20 years ago it couldn't happen because it was still predominantly, "British film is about middle-class white families and what they do."
The Chinese Student Association at Cornell put together their own play. It was all Asian people in the cast except for me, because they wanted to do a couple of scenes about an interracial relationship. I was the only non-Asian person on stage; the entire audience was Asian apart from my 10 friends that showed up.
Years ago, there was one Asian person in a soap and the entire Asian acting community was going for that role. Now, you can find a few different Asian people, and their character isn't entirely based on their religion or culture: they just happen to be in a soap.
We promote Asian storytelling - not just Asian stories but Asian people in stories with the full spectrum of the human experience. When you say, 'Oh, it's not enough attention on Asians. It's more black and white,' that game becomes like you're playing the discrimination Olympics.
If I make a joke about black people or Asian people or whatever, and then an Asian comes up to me afterwards and says, "That joke offended me," I'm still more or less not going to listen, but at least it makes sense, like I said something that was about them.
I wish people wouldn't just see me as the Asian girl who beats everyone up, or the Asian girl with no emotion. People see Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock in a romantic comedy, but not me. You add raceto it, and it became, 'Well, she's too Asian', or, ‘She's too American’. I kind of got pushed out of both categories. It's a very strange place to be. You're not Asian enough and then you're not American enough, so it gets really frustrating.
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