Fresh Off the Boat

Watching the premiere of “Fresh Off the Boat” with the Asian American Students Association, I came to a startling conclusion about my own upbringing: I felt as if I wasn’t truly Asian-American.

While most of the students in the group laughed along with some of the jokes in the show, based on their own experiences growing up in Chinese or Taiwanese-American families, I found myself unable to relate. Even though I identify as a Chinese American, I realized that many of those experiences were altogether different from my own. Granted, I knew and understood the cultural references, such as the difficulty immigrant parents faced with strong Chinese accents. However, these were things that I had not personally experienced. Both of my parents were born here in the United States. Growing up in the Detroit area, they have always spoken English at home.

The experiences of Chinese-American immigrants in the United States vary wildly. Much of this disparity can be attributed to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the subsequent National Origins Quotas that all but choked off Chinese immigration in the first half of the 20thcentury. As a result of those policies, it is estimated that only about ten percent of the Chinese-American population in the United States consists of third-generation people like me. Most Chinese Americans are first- or second-generation.

Admittedly, “Fresh Off the Boat” presents only a slice of the Asian-American experience, depicting a Taiwanese-American family with first-generation parents and second-generation children. Neither South Asian Americans nor other East Asian Americans play roles in the show.

As a third-generation Chinese American, I am about as far-removed from the immigrant experience as most white or black Americans, whose families have also lived here for generations. Dealing with the language barrier or the pressures of assimilation are simply not things that factor into my life due to growing up stateside. “Fresh Off the Boat” does nothing to depict that part of the generational immigrant experience.

Yet, I came to realize that “Fresh Off the Boat” is still an immensely important show. The scarcity of Asian Americans in American media was something that has always stood out to me. In a room full of people at a recent AASA meeting, we struggled to name more than a few Asian-American actors and actresses from our childhood that were not cast in femme fatale or martial arts roles.

As American society has changed, the role of Asian Americans in media has changed as well. For example, before the rise of actors like Bruce Lee, Asian men were frequently cast in emasculated, subservient roles like coolies or sidekicks to heroes, while women played hyper-sexualized roles. This stereotyping of Asian actors and actresses into specific niche roles only furthered the otherization of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners.”

I don’t necessarily share the same cultural experiences as many other Asian Americans who are from more recent immigrant generations, but I, like many other Asian Americans, can relate to the number of times that we have been told “your English is really good,” and then asked, “how long have you been in America?” or, “where are you really from?” Those kinds of experiences are based less on cultural experiences insomuch as they are a reflection of ingrained racial attitudes about Asian Americans.

And that is why a show like “Fresh Off the Boat” is so important in the discourse of American media. It does not represent all of the different possible immigrant experiences, but that is not a bad thing — if a show were to do that, the Adult Swim skit “Too Many Cooks” would be an apt comparison. Some parts of it are certainly problematic — the forced accents and the casting of a Korean-American man to play a Taiwanese-American man, for instance. Yet, the very fact that it stars an Asian-American family and increases the footprints of Asian Americans in a prime time TV slot on a major network is groundbreaking.

Striking a balance between embracing its cultural roots while still appealing to a larger American audience, “Fresh Off the Boat” could potentially create a new role for Asian Americans in the discourse of the overall American experience. By showing the experiences of the Huang family, the show can help dismantle the notion of Asian Americans as “perpetual foreigners” and shatter the stereotypes for Asian-American actors, allowing them to play “normal” roles. “Fresh Off the Boat” is not a perfect piece of television. But it doesn’t need to be. It is a step in the right direction toward more equitable representation in media, and that’s enough. Asian Americans are currently the fastest-growing census demographic, growing from a population of 11.9 million in 2000 to 17.3 million in 2010, constituting a 46percentincrease — a larger increase than any other demographic group. Asian Americans are increasingly becoming a growing voice for change. Almost eight million people watched the premiere, and it heralds better things to come.

Nicholas Wu isa freshman from Grosse Pointe Shores, Mich. He can be reached at nmwu@princeton.edu.