In 'Bad Asians,' a friend group threatens its reputation with a viral video

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lillian Li says Bad Asians was drawn from her upbringing in a hypercompetitive Chinese-American community. In the novel, four 20-somethings, who grew up in a similar environment, confront the challenges of the 2008 financial crisis and begin to let loose. Their former classmate documents their frustrations in what becomes one of the first viral YouTube videos. In today’s episode, Li speaks with Here & Now’s Scott Tong about the initial privacy of the early internet, exploding Asian American stereotypes, and why she wanted to write about friendship.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh.
0:05.0	In all the questioning about why young people don't hang out with each other as much as they used to,
0:10.0	why are they so lonely?
0:12.0	There's one hypothesis going around that it's the omnipresence of cameras on our phones.
0:17.0	This idea that one video of you doing something embarrassing or saying something
0:21.6	you shouldn't be saying could ruin your life. The new novel Bad Asians is set during the
0:27.7	beginning of that phenomenon when you could get famous for being messy on YouTube, but
0:33.4	we didn't really fully realize what was in Pandora's box.
0:40.9	In this interview with Here and Now Scott Tong, author Lillian Lee,
0:45.1	talks about how the early internet ironically felt private in a way and how naive we all were to think so.
0:48.3	That's up ahead.
0:49.6	This message comes from Wise, the app for international people using money around the globe.
0:55.0	You can send, spend, and receive in up to 40 currencies with only a few simple taps.
1:00.4	Be smart, get Wise.
1:02.5	Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com.
1:05.7	Tease and Cs apply.
1:07.7	This new book out with a provocative title, Bad Asians.
1:11.9	It centers around four friends, all Chinese American, who, growing up were pressured to be the good Asians.
1:18.3	Get top grades, go to brand name colleges, graduate in high-powered jobs,
1:23.9	till it all went off the rails for all of them, largely because they graduated in 2008 when the economy went poof, and that's when the book gets interesting.
1:34.2	Lillian Lee is author of Bad Asians, and she's here to talk about it. Lillian, good to talk to you.
1:39.2	Good to talk to you.
	...

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