Kore invited three stand-up comedians — Hollywood Laugh Factory mainstays Walter Hong and KT Tatara, and Kristina Wong, famous for her tour “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” — to sit down for a panel discussion on everything from Asian American humor and whitewashing in Hollywood to their own experiences.
Walter Hong on Asian American representation in media:
“We only make up 3 percent of the country*, and so when you live on the coast, there’s a lot of yellow people. So you think the entire country is yellow people. Take a drive through the middle of the country, like Nebraska — people look at you, stare at you, and they’re like, ‘Woah. I haven’t seen [an Asian] in person for a long time.’ … I think we’re doing way better than people are making it out to be, but I’m also glad that they’re complaining about it.”
Kristina Wong on being an Asian American female entertainer:
“I feel like as women, a lot of behavior that women pick up, like how to behave and what is normal, is echoed from what we see on television. What is desirable, who wins, who gets to be prom queen, who gets to be popular. … It was important to have friends who are also white. These are the codes I picked up. I grew up in San Francisco, and Asian women would say to me that they did not find Asian men attractive. I think that comes from television.”
For more on our panelists, visit Walter Hong at yellowsheki.com, Kristina Wong at kristinawong.com and KT Tatara at kttatara.com.
*Editor’s note: the Asian American population was 5.8 percent of the U.S. total as of 2011, according to the Pew Research Center.
