'Joy Luck Club' To Pachinko: The Asian Diaspora On-Screen

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4.3 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

From "Turning Red" to "Pachinko" to "After Yang," it's been a big year for stories about the Asian diaspora.

Even so, the entertainment industry — and the projects it greenlights — remains overwhelmingly white.

A new book chronicles Asian-American contributions to pop culture — from the problematic to the groundbreaking. It's called "Rise: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now."

We talk with Yang, sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, and "Pachinko" director Soo Hugh about telling stories of the Asian diaspora.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A child is coming, she will thrive and through her, her family will endure.
0:23.9	That's the core of Pachinko, the novel by Korean-American author Minjin Lee.
0:29.0	She's been adapted into an Apple TV miniseries.
0:32.0	Pachinko follows a young woman named Sunja, who grows up in Korea during Japanese colonization.
0:38.3	When she gets pregnant, she's forced to leave her homeland and start over in Japan.
0:42.9	Her journey unfolds into an epic family saga that spans three generations.
0:48.2	This year we've seen projects that feature Asian-American and Pacific Islander creators
0:52.4	and characters from Apple TV's Pachinko to Disney and Pixar's Turning Red.
0:58.3	May-May! Breakfast is ready!
1:00.3	It's coming!
1:04.3	It's gonna be me!
1:10.3	Is everything okay?
1:14.3	I'm a grown-spread monster!
1:18.3	Don't look at me!
1:20.3	Stay back!
1:22.3	It's happened already!
1:24.3	What did you say?
1:26.3	I've been... May!
1:28.3	Our ancestors sat a mystical connection with Red Pandas.
1:32.3	Are you kidding me?
1:34.3	Just little quirk!
1:36.3	But even with all these stories about the Asian diaspora, the entertainment industry and the projects
	...

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