Kristina Wong Crushes the Model Minority Myth

If you take a look at the Twitter account of performance artist Kristina Wong you’ll notice she uses a headline on several of her posts that says “Constantly Crushing the Model Minority Myth.” The idea is simple – to eradicate the idea that the Asian/Pacific Islander community has to always be exceptional. That their children have to be exceptional. That they will always excel in whatever they do. And nothing will bring shame to the family.

Understanding that idea is going to be important in recognizing what Wong is doing with From Number to Name, an online event co-presented by East West Players and API Rise this weekend that she has helped create and is directing. The subheading for the show is “Re-imagining the Criminal Justice System with Real Stories from the API Community of Life on the Inside.”

Earlier this week I spoke with Wong about the show, creating drama out of this subject and also about cancel culture. After all, we spoke on the same day that the Los Angeles Stage Alliance disbanded after mishaps during their awards show where the name of an Asian-American actress was mispronounced and the photo that accompanied her was actually of another Asian-American woman. In short, we had a lot to talk about.

What follows are excerpts from that conversation that have been edited for length and clarity.

What are your goals for From Number to Name, both as a form of entertainment and a form of advocacy?

There’s a lot to say I want one show to do. But on the most basic level I want to create a very human experience for the audience. Where the Asian American audience is hearing about the effects of incarceration on the Asian American community – which is something we never talk about. I think a lot of us don’t even think about it. There’s so much shame and stigma around incarceration – the idea that anyone in our community could have done anything bad enough to go to jail.

We have one woman who was incarcerated in our group. Her family doesn’t talk to her anymore. Some of the people who were incarcerated are able to return to their family, but the dynamics have switched. One of them, Kirn Kim, who got out eight years ago, was an honor roll student at 16 when he went to jail. His family had to live with the stigma of “our son is in prison.” The family structure fell apart.

How do you create something dramatically from these stories?

We had no script. We would do these exercises on Zoom and the folks in our group just opened their mouths and wow, “You talk the way playwrights dreams they could write, but you’re just talking about your life.” Four rehearsals in we felt we had enough information to shape the script. We would also find the connections people had with each other. I’m wowed that we got it together so quickly – this will be a six-and-a-half week process – but I also had complete faith having been in conversations with all these people. The subject is so rich, we barely scratched the surface with this. I still feel like there are ten more shows to get to all the issues in this.

You regularly add “Constantly Crushing the Model Minority Myth” to your Twitter posts. How fiercely entrenched is that idea amongst non-API people?

I have no idea but it exists. There are those who think, “We did this, we pulled it off, we adjusted.” It think that is shifting with all the violence against us. This idea has now rendered us invisible as if we took stuff from people and got jobs and got ahead and now people resent us for that and target us for violence.

We need to confront this. We have to come forward with all these things we’re ashamed of before someone else who isn’t us tries to bring it forward to try to represent our flaws for us.

Speaking of that violence, what will it take for the damage comments like calling Covid the “Chinese Virus” and “Kung Flu” did to be mitigated?

We need more of our stories out there to show us as human beings with a full range of emotions and colors. We don’t just deliver Chinese food. We’re not just interesting people on dating apps. So much has to be done. Asian Americans also need to shift. We have to take a side. My parent’s generation said “We don’t want to get involved, we don’t want to rock the boat.” We’re going to have to rock the boat otherwise we’re going to get killed. We have to speak up against the violence. We have to protect ourselves. But we also have to acknowledge the work of the civil rights movement was lead by Black and Brown people who are still getting the worst of it. We have to support them and we can’t be fighting each other. We have to figure out how to dismantle and defeat racism. We have a long way to go.

Los Angeles Stage Alliance announced on Monday that it was disbanding. Do you have any concerns that the current environment calls not just for heartfelt apologies, but for complete cancellation of those people or organizations who make mistakes both large and small?

I empathize with every theater institution in America who is running with not enough staff and not enough support. But I think structurally there’s something that wasn’t working with that organization and those problems happened. I also don’t want to diminish East West Players or organizations of color who are feeling hurt and tell them they are over-reaching. If they truly feel this organization wasn’t working to represent them and they had to leave, I want to support that.

I felt, wow they burned it all down. Do we have a contingency plan? The thing I’m witnessing is that folks, BiPOC artists, they don’t want to be just hanging out on the side. I don’t know what the new structure will be. We’ll start all over again. I could wait for the system that fell apart to come back or we’re Robinson Crusoe right now and we’re just going to make a new system. I do know that if there’s that much passion to shut it down there will hopefully be just as much passion to start whatever the new model is that really thinks about equity and inclusion.

From Number to Name will be streamed live twice. The first performance is Saturday, April 10th at 10:00 PM EDT/7:00 PM PDT. The second performance is Sunday, April 11th at 5:00 PM EDT/2:00 PM PDT. Tickets begin at $5 and the event will take place via Zoom. For tickets go here.

Kristina Wong can be found on Twitter @mskristinawong

Photo: Kristina Wong (Courtesy East West Players)