In your excerpt, you boldly claim, “gay Asian American drag queens will save us all.” How will they do that and what are they saving us from?

A while back, a number of gay Asian men started a magazine called『Noodle』. It was a pretty ambitious undertaking and they provided a really good forum for discussing issues of race and sexuality from a queer Asian perspective. Previous magazines that featured gay Asian men were largely run by gay white men and as scholars like Russell Leong have pointed out, were really meant for a white male readership. Because of this, they had a tendency to objectify Asian men for white male consumption.

The magazine was transformational in a number of ways. But the one issue that I had with it was that it took a route to challenging racial stereotypes by buying into the existing narrative about what constitutes “attractive” in the gay community. Certainly, they weren’t alone in doing something like this. I remember that when I was in college, a group of activists started an Asian Male calendar which wasn’t necessarily targeted towards a gay audience to challenge the stereotypes about Asian men being less masculine and less “sexy” than white men. The problem with these things is that they often try to challenge the stereotypes about Asian men by presenting Asian men who fit the model of “attractiveness” that parallel white men. So, men who are taller, men with a particular type of body, etc. In doing so, the underlying message is that “Asian men are hot too” but only because some of us look like, or have bodies like, white men. In that way, it reinforces the larger narrative that white is, indeed, more attractive. So as well intended as these things are, they nonetheless affirm the white standards of attractiveness.

The problem isn’t that there aren’t Asian men who “fit” that model. The real problem is that physical traits routinely associated with Asian men are considered less attractive, less masculine, etc. For that matter, the problem is that a very narrow definition of “masculine” comes to be considered “attractive.” If we really want to challenge the racist narrative that Asian men are less attractive, less sexually desirable, less masculine, etc. than white men, we can’t use the “master’s tools” to do that. We can’t simply put up Asian men who have “white” features and say, “We’re sexy too!” What we need to do is challenge the very definition of what constitutes “attractiveness.” We need to challenge the larger narrative about masculinity and what is and is not considered “masculine.” And perhaps equally important, we need to challenge the prevailing narrative in the gay community that men who fit a very narrow definition of “masculine” are somehow more sexually desirable than men who don’t. We need to trouble the definition of attractiveness that promotes features and characteristics normally associated with white men as being more attractive than features normally associated with men of color.

Asian drag queens do just that. Instead of trying to buy into a western standard of beauty or attempt to behave “more masculine,” gay Asian drag queens embrace the existing narratives about Asian men and use that to their advantage. So in some ways, they’re not only challenging what counts as attractive, but they’re also saving us, fundamentally from ourselves. They’re abandoning the drive to make Asian men desirable by mimicking white men – because, as I discuss in my book, that will never work – and demanding that we redefine what it means to be attractive and desirable. So as odd as it might sound, they’re saving us from ourselves.

In what ways, particularly with regards to performance, have Asian American drag queens been able to use existing narratives on queer Asian Americans for subversive purposes

Studies on drag queens have generally fallen into two camps. On the one hand, some scholars have argued that drag performances simply reinforce prevailing gender stereotypes and norms, thereby reinforcing the gender hierarchy. On the other hand, others have argued that drag challenges gender and sexual categories, thereby disrupting the gender binary, which can be seen as a subversive act. But whatever one’s belief is about drag, most people would agree that a “successful” drag performance, by nature, requires drag queens to draw upon existing cultural narratives about gender. Because of this, I’m not sure that drag is, or even has to be, one or the other. But more importantly, I don’t think that a “successful” drag performance draws only upon existing narratives about gender. Rather, it draws upon narratives about race and class as well. When we examine drag queens using an intersectional lens, we begin to see that narratives about race add a complicated layer to what can be considered a subversive act. In order to be “successful,” Asian drag queens draw on existing narratives about gender, presenting themselves in hyper-feminine ways. More importantly, they do so because they are aware of how Asian men are racialized to be more feminine than white men. Some gay Asian men that I spoke with for my book who don’t do drag found this to be problematic because they believed that Asian drag queens simply reinforced those stereotypes. But I think that people who believe that miss the point and fail to see the very racialized context in which drag performances occur. In the gay community, whiteness and masculinity are the currency of desirability. Unfortunately, the racialized narratives about Asian men are that they possess neither.

In ｢Geisha of a Different Kind｣, I demonstrate that gay Asian drag queens consciously make a decision to perform hyper-feminine drag in order to utilize existing racialized beliefs about Asian men that they confront in the gay community. Yet by winning drag pageants where beauty and desirability are the criteria for success, gay Asian drag queens challenge the taken-for-granted assumptions about the beauty and desirability of whiteness and masculinity. In this way, gay Asian drag queens challenge assumptions about what it means to desire someone of a particular race.

Decades after the Stonewall uprising, queer Asian Americans are still struggling for visibility within the LGBT community and in society at-large. Though the tactics used by other racial minority groups are instructive, why have queer Asian Americans largely not been able to “break through” in both contexts?

I think the answer to this question will probably be met with a bit of hostility, for a number of reasons. But I want to give what I think is an honest response. To be frank, there are two broad reasons why this is so. One is socio-historical and has to do with the way that “gay” and “Asian” is thought about in the larger imagination. When we think about who is “gay,” we routinely think about white men. This isn’t an accident. Rather, the way that gay media presents what is “gay” equates gayness with whiteness. In my book, I talk about a number of different ways that gay media have equated gayness with whiteness, but the most telling example is an article that appeared in『Out』magazine titled, ｢How to Gab in Gaysian｣. In the article, the magazine claimed to give its readers a lesson on how to translate Gaysian into English. Clearly, by implying that the readers of the magazine would need a “English-Gaysian dictionary,” the column presupposes that the readers are white, or at least not Asian.

More importantly, the tactic used by national gay organizations to win acceptance has been largely along the lines of presenting gays and lesbians as being “just like” straight people. A part of that strategy has been to present gay couples as being “just like” straight couples. Certainly, gay couples and straight couples are similar in a number of ways. But the gay media, and to some extent mainstream media, have unfortunately presented gay and lesbian couples as having very gendered relationships similar to those often found among, and stereotypically believed to be characteristic of, straight couples. So to some extent, media has presented gay and lesbian relationships as husband and wife relationships rather than husband and husband or wife and wife relationships. Often, when there is an interracial coupling of a gay white man and a gay Asian man in the media, the Asian man is presented as the wife. So in many ways, gay white men are normalized while gay Asian men are other-ed for the purpose of presenting a very heteronormative gay couple.

On the other hand, as Russell Leong has noted, the model minority myth that constructs all Asian Americans as being hard-working, studious, and family oriented, precludes the idea that Asian Americans can be both gay and Asian. So here too, gay Asian Americans are largely invisible in the way that we think about what it means to be Asian American.

But it’s not just outside forces that make it difficult for gay Asian men to gain visibility. Another big issue that I see among queer Asian American men, not so much women, is that too many of us fail to see each other as potential allies and/or potential sexual partners and see each other as “competition” for the affections of white men. Of course, this is deeply ingrained in us through the constant portrayals of white men as being more desirable sexual partners than men of color by the gay media. So a lot of gay Asian men come to see getting a white man as a measure of our own self-worth. In fact, I’ve met a lot of gay Asian men who actively attempt to distance themselves from other gay Asian men as a way of distancing themselves from the stereotypes of Asian men. So they come to see themselves as exceptions rather than coming to see the images and stereotypes as problematic. Certainly not all of us, but a significant percentage of us see the world that way. In fact, many of us have become apologists for some blatantly racist acts committed by gay white men towards gay men of color. And that makes organizing around race to be difficult.

This problem isn’t by any means unique to gay Asian men. There are numerous accounts by gay black and gay Latino writers about the problematic desire for whiteness among gay men of color. But for gay black and Latino men, there is a much larger and visible socializing along race that has the potential to lead to activism. For example, there are some visible social spaces created and maintained for gay black men and gay Latino men outside of the racially fetishized spaces where the intent is for men of different races to come and meet each other. Yes, there are organizations and clubs where that is still the intent, but for gay black and Latino men, there are alternative spaces. We don’t see this so much among gay Asian men. With Asian men, most of the social spaces that are allegedly for us are actually a platform for white men to meet Asian men. I want to be clear that I don’t think that in and of itself is problematic. But what is problematic is that there are no other alternatives. So if the primary goal of social spaces that are allegedly meant for gay Asian men is to meet white men, it further compounds seeing other Asian men as competition.

The good news is that there are, at least, gay Asian organizations that are trying to address this. When I was in Seattle, there were two groups, Q&A and YAMS that did quite a bit to build connections between gay Asian men. For a lot of the men that we reached, it was the first time that they actively socialized with other gay Asian men and these organizations gave them a safe space to voice their concerns. In many ways, they were phenomenally beneficial in that they gave gay Asian men a social space outside of bars and mainstream gay organizations that largely cater to gay white men. But these things are labor and cost intensive and difficult to maintain. Clearly, we’re all socialized in the same way and desire for whiteness, once developed, is difficult to overcome. But at the very least, we need to start recognizing where that comes from and how that privileges white men at our expense. Once we start doing that, we can begin to challenge it.

Your music is often preoccupied with the online world. Do you think you’re addicted to it?

Rina Sawayama: I definitely am dependent on the internet, but who isn’t? It’s like an acceptable addiction now, and like cigarettes or alcohol, I think it’ll take a while for people to understand the negative effects of it as we're mainly seeing it for the positive effects at the moment.

These days, musicians aren’t just musicians anymore. They also have to be curators of their online world. Do you think this allows more freedom or more pressure or both?

Rina Sawayama: It’s definitely more pressure, and if you’re not careful you end up spending less time doing music. Social media is like a full-time job, so you have to put the music first sometimes – otherwise you go crazy. That said, I’ve definitely had more creative freedom because people trust that I know how to “brand” myself through instagram – whatever that says about the music. It’s a double-edged sword, and I want to stand in the middle of it rather than be stabbed by it.

Your video for ｢Where U Are｣ totally reminds me of your Instagram account. Tell me a bit about creating it.

Rina Sawayama: Me and Ali Kurr (the director) got together for this video a couple of months after my track ｢Tunnel Vision｣ was out. I wanted to continue this theme of technology and feminine despair/awkwardness in the narrative, but make a more classic music video and explore a richer, darker colour palette. We’ve worked together before, and I knew that Ali would bring some awesome references and experience with editing that would be invaluable to helping the idea come to life.

We went through lots of different cool ideas – some we’ve shelved for future releases – but we had absolutely no budget to make it happen. Luckily, Ali’s friend had borrowed an incredible kit and kindly let us use it over the weekend. I quickly emailed everyone I knew, pulled a few favours, and got the production together within a week. The entire thing cost £200.

You worked with Ali Kurr for this video and artist Arvida Byström for the video for ｢Tunnel Vision｣. Do you think women produce different sorts of visuals?

Rina Sawayama: The majority of my team are women, and the men who I work with are feminists who understand the importance of fair representation in the music industry. In all aspects of work, women sometimes produce different things to men, and also sometimes they don’t. This idea, combined with the fact that the industry is still very male dominated, is why it’s so important to empower fellow female creatives.

What about the lyrics? Tell me about the ideas behind them.

Rina Sawayama: Well the song started life as a cover of Michael Jackson’s 1972 song ｢I Wanna Be Where You Are｣ – I really clicked with the rhythm of the lyrics and so I adapted it into a Garageband demo in 2013. I revisited the demo again in 2015 when I was obsessing over the idea of online life, so took the subject of longing and regret in the MJ chorus and started working on applying it to an original verse lyric. The lyrics went through several different iterations – I work a lot with vowel sounds, so the lyrics have to click in that respect. I really enjoyed reworking this and going over different drafts, although I drove Justin (Hoost, the producer) crazy as usual.

Do you ever feel like people have expected you to create certain styles of music due to your ethnicity/gender?

Rina Sawayama: Well there isn't really a precedent for a UK-based Japanese pop singer, which is lucky and unlucky. Maybe some people might get confused because I'm not rocking the whole “kawaii” thing and not singing sickly sweet “j-pop” as it is exported here. It’s like people are surprised by the fact that I speak really good English and that I’m quite outspoken about racism and sexism – all things that don’t fit into people’s Asian stereotypes. The truth is, I'm influenced by Japanese pop music, and that does come through sometimes, but with regards to music I’ve been lucky so far. My goal is for people to stop calling me a “Japanese singer from London” – just a “singer from London” would be good.

What does the rest of 2016 look like?

Rina Sawayama: I’m releasing my EP『Alone Together』soon. It’s not finished yet – I’d say it’s about 80% done, but it keeps going back and forth because I'm being a perfectionist. There will also be ,ore self-directed videos and hopefully my first show soon! I’m also looking for female backing band members, so hit me up if you want to join my band!

thanks for watching. now, don’t bother paying. i would rather you download this new single online free and donate the money you would have spent to bernie sander’s grassroots campaign instead.

free download: soundcloud.com/seb_castro

this music video is not just an endorsement of bernie sanders. it is my loudest possible condemnation of trickle down economics and the neo-liberal policies they have espoused.

i see bernie as the american counter part to a greater world-wide progressive movement, one that holds wall street/corporate interests responsible for the boom and bust cycles plaguing our global economy, demands better enforced regulatory oversight, calls for campaign finance reform (along with immediate removal of Citizens United), denounces unfair corporate-created trade agreements (like NAFTA, TPP), fights for climate change, denounces the privatization of health care, education, for-profit prisons which have brutally disproportionately harmed blacks/minorities, fights for greater LGBT/womens’ rights, and one that calls BULL SHIT when pundits and faux-liberal think tanks claim social safety net programs (like education/healthcare/minimum wage/social security) are unaffordable.

if the mainstream media spent half as much time questioning our ability to fund corporate welfare and endless war as they do health care and education, they might still have an ounce of credibility.

this "feel the bern" music video may be provocative and unapologetic, but it does so to best relay one unsettling reality--YOU ARE GETTING SCREWED. we are all getting screwed, and the only way we will improve our circumstances is if we collectively increase our awareness and act.

i am not going to stand and here and claim the infallible bernie can do no wrong, but given his decades long track record against big money interests, he has proven his authenticity. our corrupt campaign finance system has given hillary every possible advantage, and yet by nothing short of a grassroots miracle, bernie has surged his way to national polls. WE DID THAT.

and now we need to go further. we are 3 days away from super tuesday, the day in which the largest number of state primaries will help determine the presidential nominee of the democratic party. now more than ever, we americans need to engage the political process. knock on doors. open apps. call old friends. and PHONE BANK, BRO. together, we can get a real progressive in that white house.

just another bernie supporter,
seb

MasterMarc: Hello Yoshi Kawasaki. I think after all the publicity for the Fetish Week London mostly everyone in the kinky world know your face. How was the Fetish Week for you? A lot of fun I think. Tell us a little about your experiences.

Yoshi: Hi Master Marc. I am so honored to be featured in Fetish Week London 2015. Last year my good friend, BastilleXXX (@blkbastille), introduced me to the world of fetish. I was always into bondage and S&M but never knew there was more depth in it. And then I had chance to model for Recon. This whole experience gave me a opportunity to try out something new. I am more and more into leather and rubber gear than ever, as I designed my own rubber gear. In addition to it, now barefoot and eating sweaty armpit and arse turns me on as well, which I would never expected to be interested in.

MasterMarc: You really seem to be a kinky Japaneese. I like that. Yes i have seen several of your pics and they look great. Also on the fetish week a lot of people have been watching you. It seems that they have liked what they have seen. How have you become a fetish model?

Yoshi: I’d always wanted to become a porn model but I thought it would be handy enough to have a non-porn model option as well. One day I and BastilleXXX were playing around with camera taking pics and he suggested me to do a proper photoshoot as a model. That was my very first work as a model and also very first photoshoot with Recon.

I do not only fetish, but also other model jobs as well, like artistic, erotic, fashion and etc. However I certainly feel much more relaxed and confident in fetish gear. I think that’s because I’m not acting when I’m in them. Just like the cover pictures for『QX Men』Magazine or『Dirty Boys』Magazine. I am a natural born puppy, I suppose haha

MasterMarc: Hehe, it seems as you have found a way to earn money with what you really like to be and do. Of course it is not an easy job, it is hard work, but it can also be fun. How was the feeling as you have been for the first time on a porn movie set and you have known, that in some minutes you have to perform and having sex in front of all the people?

Yoshi: Of course I got nervous for the first time before the camera. But I’m a bit of exhibitionist. (Have posted a video of me jerking off on a balcony once on my XTube) I love being watched, especially by strangers, while fucking or getting fucked so actually being watched turns me on even harder, made me moan louder made my cock harder.

MasterMarc: You really seem to be a dirty little bastard. What are the things you really like at your job? And what is your aim as porn model?

Yoshi: I love a lot of things in gay porn. But what I love the most about my job is that my job makes your fantasies come true. One day you’re a police officer and fucking a criminal with your buddy, the next day you’re a prisoner and getting fucked by a couple of hunky prison guards

I think Asians are virtually unknown in the gay porn industry and I would like to change that. I personally haven’t seen many famous Asian porn models. It is my dream and aim to fill this void and become a notable and famous Asian porn star.

MasterMarc: Probably your dreams come true. We hope it for you. You seem to be a real kinky guy. How would YOUR porn film look like, a porn in which you are storybook writer, director and actor at the same time?

Yoshi: I have a lot of ideas or fantasies I would like to become true! And all of them are more or less kinky. haha But my ultimate fantasy would be taken place in a dungeon or some kind of shed. On the wall of the place there’s a big hole. From the big hole you can see only my feet tied up against the wall and ass like I’m in a sling. From you, you can’t see my face or even upper half of my body, all you hear is me moaning behind the wall and from me, all I can see is the wall and nothing else. I don’t even know what kind of guy’s fucking me now. Of course my hands and face are tied as well. The concept is that bunch of guys just use my ass with no mercy just like I’m some fuck hole, cum dump, piss pod or some sort. I can’t stop talking about my kinky imagination. Haha

MasterMarc: You don’t have to stop because it sounds nice and horny. :-) I am sure, that a lot of people are interested what kind of man do you like. Do you have there any no-gos?

Yoshi: I LOVE male features. As long as they have cocks and asses for me to eat and fuck, basically no boundary :-p Of course there’re guys I particularly like. It used to be bulky, muscular guys but these days I found skinny hairy guys really attractive. Especially ones with dominant attitude and manly smell. I could just rub my face in their crotch, armpit and barefoot all day. Haha

MasterMarc: For how long are you now living your kinks and how have you discovered, that you need more than just vanilla? What have been your first steps into kinky action?

Yoshi: It’s been about an year now since I was introduced to kinks. Although I had been very interested in bondage and S&M when I was little, never actually had a chance to experience it.

When I went to England, I met Blkbatille on Grindr and one night I visited his house. My heart was beating hard and I opened the door naked apart from my boots and harness. His cock was rock hard and as soon as I entered his house he forced me to my knees to suck his pierced cock. He put me in leather gear then we went to a sex club in South London, he locked me on a sling and after his rough fuck, left me in there. And don’t remember how many cocks I took that night. That was the my first step of kink. From then of I was completely hooked

Don’t get me wrong, I like vanilla sex too. With cuddle and kiss. But being used as an object turns me on even more.

MasterMarc: Tender moments are part of sm too. There is nothing what we could get wrong, boy. You’re Japanese and now you’re living in Europe. How do you like Europe, how long will you stay and what do you do beside your model and porn jobs?

Yoshi: It’s such a cliche to say this but very different from where I come from and interesting. The people, the culture all the difference, The more I know the more fascinate they become.

I’ll be in Barcelona for a year and the who knows? I might stay here, go to another country in Europe or even travel to America.

So at the moment, I’m looking for something I can feel enthusiastic about other than porn and modeling.

MasterMarc: Hehe, I can imagine that it is different. How is the gay scene in Japan and how the fetish community?

Yoshi: Gay scene in Japan is pretty active, I think. Not as active as some European countries. However slowly but steadily becoming bigger and bigger, luckily.

Since I haven’t really come back to Japan, I don’t know what the fetish community in Japan is like. But I want to be part of it in the future and would be great to spread the pleasure of Fetish!!

MasterMarc: At the moment you’re checking out the business to plan your new engagements. Do you have any projects and labels you would like to work for and why?

Yoshi: At the moment I’m trying to get in touch with some American companies. KINKMEN.COM is one of the companies that I am very keen to work with. Their movies are extremely hot and the quality is also very high.

When it comes to kink and fetish, I think CAZZO FILM is one of the bests definitely. Their movies always make horny. The concept they come up with is like the kinkiest fantasy you could possibly imagine.

MasterMarc: I think a lot of our readers would like to see you suffer and be used in one of the kinkmen movies. ;-) We wish you all the best for your career. I am sure we will talk again soon.

Yoshi: Thank you. it was a pleasure to talk about my projects. And you, dudes, check out my hot movies I have done with UKHotJocks. And there’re much more to come in the near future so don’t miss out!!

In ｢Into The Badlands｣, you pretty much stay away from special effects. The action is legit.

That was the whole goal: Bringing legitimate Chinese martial arts cinema to a production with Hollywood-style budgets. When I was a kid, I loved watching kung fu movies — in San Francisco, we had ｢Kung Fu Theater｣ on TV on Saturdays, and they’d air old Shaw Brothers movies with English dubbing, things like that. Then one day my grandfather said to me “You want to watch kung fu? Let me show you real kung fu.” And he took me down to the Great Star Theater in Chinatown to watch Jet Li’s first movie, ｢Shaolin Temple｣. After it was over, he said “That is kung fu.” I was so enamored of it that I wanted to learn it for myself. So at age 11, I started learning wushu.

I was a hyperactive kid, and it took awhile for me to find the right teacher. My master was a Shaolin kung fu teacher, but he also taught tai chi, Chinese medicine, brush painting — he was adept at all facets of Chinese culture. It was great to be a Chinese American kid and absorb all of that. [Orinda,] the town I grew up in, was mostly Caucasian, so learning martial arts really brought me much closer to my roots. And because my master was this renaissance man, I wasn’t just learning a fighting style, I was learning how kung fu permeates all aspects of life, from eating to healthy living to mental state. I learned the philosophy behind it, which is an essential part of martial arts that I think often gets overlooked.

But you never had any intention to become an action star — or even an actor?

Not at all. I took a crazy path to get here. I graduated from university with a degree in architecture, and then ended up doing a series of internships with different firms. And once I was in an office environment, I realized that at school what I was doing was 98 percent creative, 2 percent makework, but in the real world, it was the other way around. I had an older classmate who worked for I.M. Pei. She ended up drawing the same window detail over and over for two years straight.

So I went on a soul-searching mission. It was 1997, and I decided to visit Hong Kong because this historical moment was happening, with the island being handed back to China. I made the mistake of going to Japan first, where I spent all of my money. By the time I got to Hong Kong I was broke. I was in this bar having a drink, depressed that I’d have to go straight back to the U.S., and this guy came up to me and asked if I wanted to be in a TV commercial. I asked how much, and they told me $4,000. And because I wanted to keep traveling, I took the money and did the ad. Well, this director, Yonfan, saw my commercial, and he called me in for an interview, and by the end of the conversation, he asked me to play the lead in his next film. I said to him, “Are you crazy? I don’t act, and I can’t even speak Cantonese!”

That same week, I ran into Jackie Chan at a party, and within a few minutes of talking, he told me he wanted to be my manager. “What, are you serious?” My mind was blown. I went from drinking in a bar to starring in a feature film and having the biggest star in Asia as my manager.

And it would never have happened that way in the United States.

Never. So after things started to take off in Hong Kong, I decided I’d stay there and build my career there as much as possible. I loved the vibe of filmmaking there — it’s much more intimate, you have these passionate people from all walks of life, from blue-collar to highly educated types, all working very closely together. Hong Kong had accepted me, and frankly, I thought I was just going to stay there.

You didn’t think about trying to come back and make it in Hollywood?

I knew from growing up that they wouldn’t put my kind of people onscreen. There were no decent roles for Asians, much less Asian males. Even when Jackie Chan broke through over here and people fell in love with him, they weren’t really seeing him as this iconic, superstar actor — they were seeing him as this cute, funny oriental dude who spoke broken English and did acrobatic tricks. As an Asian American male, what they were in love with is everything you hate, you know?

When they were premiering ｢Rush Hour 2｣, Jackie invited all of the artists his company managed to come to L.A. for the premiere, and at the premiere party a producer came up to me and said, “Oh, you’re an actor in Hong Kong? But your English is amazing!” And I said, “Oh, I was born here.” “Oh, you’re not from Hong Kong?” And he lost interest in me as soon as he knew I was from America, not Asia. He bought into the stereotype that all Asians are foreigners, that we all speak with an accent.

Well, that’s pretty much the only way Asians were depicted in movies in the ’80s and ’90s.

I grew up with ｢16 Candles｣, ｢Long Duk Dong｣, that shit. That character, for our generation, pretty much sealed the idea for a lot of Americans that all Asian people are like that.

Which brings us to ｢Into The Badlands｣: Sunny is definitely not like that.

It’s a movie that takes place in America. There’s no reason for it. Our goal was to take the typical wuxia film and set it in a future America, giving it a kind of Southern gothic vibe. We wanted to replicate the basic structure — the feudal society, the epic battles, the themes of loyalty and honor — but to do it as a mashup with tropes that people would feel were weirdly familiar.

How did you get involved with the project?

Well, the genesis of project came when Stacey Sher, one of our executive producers, ran into the head of production of AMC [Jason Fisher] at the premiere for the movie ｢The Man with the Iron Fists｣ [Wu Tang Crew rapper RZA and Eli Roth’s homage to classic Chinese martial arts films]. He told her, “Why isn’t anyone doing this on TV? We should try it.” And because I’ve worked with Stacey before, she gave me a call and said, “AMC wants me to do this thing, but I have no idea how. You’ve done it before. Can you really do this kind of action for TV?” And I told her, “Only if you use a Hong Kong team.

Stephen Fung [an executive producer and the series’ fight director] and I wanted to reference everything we liked growing up. Late ’80s and ’90s Hong Kong action movies—Tsui Hark and Jet Li, Jackie Chan. Some old-school Shaw Brothers stuff. And anime, like ｢Fist of the North Star. Samurai films like ｢Shogun Assassin｣, because we saw the two main characters, Sunny and M.K., as wandering through this world like ｢Lone Wolf and Cub｣. And of course Bruce Lee. In a lot of ways, we saw this as righting the wrong that occurred when Warner Brothers cast David Carradine over Bruce Lee in ｢Kung Fu｣.

Casting a white guy who didn’t know martial arts over the Chinese guy who was one of the greatest martial artists in the world.

Yeah. From the beginning, we said that Sunny had to be Asian, and to their credit, AMC was totally down with that.

But you weren’t thinking of taking the role yourself.

No, not at all. I had my producer’s hat on, and I told them we had to find someone in their 20s or 30s, because if this show goes on for five or six years, the amount of fighting that has to be done is incredible — you’d need someone in their physical peak. I’m 41 now. I’ve worked with Jackie Chan, and I’ve seen the injuries he’s had, the pain he’s in. I stopped doing martial arts films in Hong Kong years ago, because as much as I love the genre, I tore an ACL, I broke an ankle — I realized it was not sustainable. So strictly for the show’s sake, I told them we really needed to get a young guy to do this.

[But] as we worked on this and the pilot was written and the character got fleshed out, I really fell in love with it. I finally gave in. And then it was training, training, training — it was hell.

Looks like the training worked.

You want to have legitimate action, you have to commit. And we wanted people to be amazed by how kickass the action was. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg — we knew that the fight scenes are what would draw people in, but the layered complexities of the storytelling, even the spiritual aspect of the plot, we wanted those to be clearly expressed in the show as well.

By spiritual aspect, do you mean the elements drawn from Chinese mythology?

Yes, because the plot is loosely, very loosely, inspired by ｢Journey to the West｣, the story of the Monkey King, who’s this rebellious, ornery character that eventually transforms into a buddha by the end of the story. The Chinese name for the Monkey King is Sun Wukong — Sunny. And the journey of the title has Sun Wukong tasked with guiding a monk to retrieve the wisdom of enlightenment. M.K. stands for Monk. But the parallels don’t get any more literal than that. ｢Journey to the West｣ has been adapted so many times that we didn’t want to rehash it — we just wanted to give our story a solid spiritual core. Sunny and M.K. are on a quest to escape the Badlands to reach this legendary city called Azra. Well, originally the city’s name was Nirvana, but we thought that was a bit too obvious.

For a spiritual story, there are some pretty steamy scenes.

Yeah, the relationships are important to the story. And it felt especially important to show an Asian male as having a sensual side. We all know the story of ｢Romeo Must Die｣, how Jet Li is the movie’s hero, and the whole time you see this connection developing between him and Aaliyah, who played the female lead. And in the last scene, Li was supposed to kiss her, but when they showed the movie to test audiences, people said they found that disgusting. In the version they released, you just see them give each other a hug. So I don’t want to say this is groundbreaking, because we need to make this a success yet, but it’s cool that we were able to right that wrong too. It’s been 15 years since ｢Romeo Must Die｣, and 40 years since ｢Kung Fu｣. That’s just ridiculous. But it’s Hollywood, so I’ll take it.

Catherine Chung: I was reading your interview from 2008 with Ursula LeGuin where you asked her about a comment she’d made about having to learn how to write as a woman. You said that described “an amazing gap between what one is and what one must be to live.”

Alexander Chee: Right.

So I want to ask what your own experience was like of crossing that gap, of learning to write as a woman, as Lilliet Berne, in your novel『The Queen of the Night』. It seems to me that that gap is one of the things that this book is about.

That is what this book is about, I think. The way that it started was that she just started speaking in my head. It was like a dictation from a ghost, even though she’s a woman who never lived.

It sounds like you were possessed.

I was. My editor called it “The Mermaid’s Kiss” — speaking specifically of the myth of the mermaid that lures the sailor to the bottom of the sea where he dies. –laughs–

No wonder you were afraid of curses and of stories coming true!

–laughs– True enough. I have always read women, always listened to them, always had them in my life as friends and intimates. My mother and sister both confide in me. And my mom in particular was a storyteller, too. So there was a way in which I really didn’t have too much fear about getting their voices right. I think I was more concerned with getting the patterns of thought right, like purely in the writing. Not so much about anything essential to gender, but more in terms of the roles that women back then were required to play socially and how that affected what they could and could not speak directly to, and then how that affected the rest of their observations and their thinking.

But also, my editors were women. And my agent is also. So really, a number of women presided over this.

One of the things that I loved most was that sense of confinement or restriction which I felt was always at play, not only in terms of what’s possible for Lilliet, but also in terms of what’s possible for all the other women in this novel. The scope of her ambition is greater than what she’s allowed. And I was especially interested in this terror that I think comes from that tension between what she’s allowed and what she wants. You write, “She had never thought that she could be this person and the world not fall apart around her.” I found it so poignant, her fear that being herself could destroy the whole world.

Thanks. That’s something that’s very much a part of the book and it comes out of the commonality that I encountered between the experience of a woman who simply wanted to be treated as a human being and my own experience as a biracial kid who just wanted to be treated as a human being. I have a joke about Jean Rhys novels, which is that every Jean Rhys novel is about a woman expecting to be treated as a human and then instead is treated as a woman.

–laughs– That’s a terrible joke.

–laughs– I know it’s terrible. But only because so much depends on her not being treated as a human. A culture organized, even braced — economically, morally — around denying the humanity of women.

I feel like, in your book, she doesn’t expect to be treated as a human.

Yes. And she’s teaching herself to expect it without quite knowing that is what she is doing.

In the novel, there were so many times that I felt Lilliet was more free than she knew, or at least that there was a possibility of freedom that she didn’t even know she could take. Was this true? Or was the possibility of freedom always an illusion?

When she escapes and decides to return to Paris, it is a horrible moment. She believes she can do it. It was very important to me to have her believing things and the reader also believing them, maybe not as much, but believing them, and then have her knocking into the truth. Like, once she escaped from Compiègne, she probably would have been better off if she had gone to the cirque. She’s come all this way from America to Europe and she wants to make a life for herself and she has these fears about what that’ll mean. She has an idea of Paris as this vast place into which she can disappear and I think most cities are smaller than we think they are.

Many of the comparisons that have been made between『The Queen of the Night』and your first novel,『Edinburgh』, have to do with scale.『Edinburgh』is such an intimate, insular portrait and Queen is so enormous and sweeping — it covers so much history, and multiple continents and empires and governments and famous historical figures. I wondered what that move was like, to go from this small intimate scale to this epic or operatic scale.

It was very frightening. My first impulse was to simply do it, and my second impulse was to question my first impulse.

Why do you think you questioned it?

I don’t know, I think it was a feeling I had, a sort of “Who do you think you are to do this” kind of thing. I was having a conversation with Heidi Julavits, who grew up near me in Maine, about this way that you are brought up in Maine, where people are like “Who the fuck do you think you are to try to do this” — this kind of really scalding, intense, debasing regard. “Why would you dare to do something?”

Oh, but it’s so exhilarating to read someone dare such things! It’s like a high-wire act, and I couldn’t help but think here you were pulling off this amazing feat writing about a heroine who is likewise pulling off these breathtaking, impossible acts, like learning to breathe fire. Did you find her to be an inspiration? I mean, maybe this is why she had to possess you and take you down this road.

That’s a fascinating idea. For a long time there was a quote that I used as an epigraph in the novel that kept me focused on the spirit of this kind of woman. It’s from『The Goncourt Journals』. They were an important part of this book. I read them and used a lot of the gossip in them in the novel so that it felt sincere. It’s somewhere in my drafts. –pauses to search drafts–

“24 February, 1868

Exactly twenty years ago today, about one o’clock, from the balcony of the flat where we lived in the Rue des Capucines, I saw the ironmonger across the street run up a ladder and, with hurried hammer strokes, knock down the words to the King which followed the word Ironmonger on the sign over his shop. After that we went to the Tuileries Gardens and saw a roebuck’s head which had been cut off, lying on the ground, and an equestrienne from the Hippodrome caracoling on her horse. The statue of Spartacus had a red bonnet on its head and a bunch of flowers in its hand. The palace clock had been stopped, and on the great balcony one of the victorious revolutionaries, wearing Louis-Phillippe’s dressing-gown and looking like a Daumier caricature, was mimicking the King’s pet phrase: ‘It is always with renewed pleasure. . . .’

Nowadays when I go along the Rue des Capucines, I see the words to the Emperor on the ironmonger’s sign, where it once read to the King.

— from『The Goncourt Journals』”

So, this idea, of the Hippodrome equestrienne at the Tuileries, just sort riding around the gardens while this roebuck’s head is lying there and all of this chaos is happening — it’s a very simple image. She almost seems innocuous. But then you remember she isn’t where she’s supposed to be — the Hippodrome — but instead, somewhere on the palace grounds, on a horse. And did she cut the head off the roebuck? In my mind, she had. But it’s not clear.

She was so interesting to me but she just gets that one flash, that one flicker of not quite a scene in a paragraph. This was an example of when I wanted to say to the writer, “Can we go over there, over by her?”

There were these incredible women back then who had these incredible lives as, variously, Hippodrome writers and novelists and courtesans — lives full of reinventions. So it’s interesting to me how so much of the literature in the period minimizes these women in character, in style. For example, George Sand, who was probably writing more than any of the men around her at that time, is almost entirely ignored by the contemporary literary establishment.

She’s one of my literary heroes! I grew up admiring the idea of her, and how all the way back then she dressed like a man and did and wrote whatever she wanted.

Yeah. She was the first woman to sue for divorce in France and she did it all to become a writer. Her work was so popular in Russia that they called it “George Sandism,” but they sort of Russianized it into a single word with z’s, like “Georgezandizm,” and she was hugely influential on writers like Dostoyevsky who was considered one of the early Russian realists who went on to change Western literature with their books.

We all read those men, we don’t read her. She’s become a caricature — the woman in the pants with the saber. Everyone knows that, no one knows the books. She’s become a jester of the freedom that her work represented. Well before Knausgaard, she published a 1,200-page autobiography called『Story of My Life』. But she’s been reduced to a gesture just a little larger than that Hippodrome equestrienne on the Tuileries grounds.

I was trying to communicate with the spirit of those women that I knew existed who were a part of the historical record. The culture had sort of turned the lights down on everyone except for the men and I was like, “Well, isn’t that interesting, that what these women were fighting for then is still something they have to fight for now, simply to be seen.”

And the fight isn’t even visible for them now.

Right. I did research for something I wanted to write, about whether George Sand had been censored. I had found a few allusions to it — to a posthumous censoring of her work. She had often been censored during her life for obvious reasons, but was there a gigantic censorship of her after her death? I couldn’t find the proof I needed from sources, and it seems apocryphal, but it was a very interesting conversation to have with people: why does no one read her anymore? Some people acted as if it was because she was just terrible, or as if none of her work had any particular long-lasting literary merit. But that’s just not true.

I love her journals perhaps the most. They are hilarious and they have dialogue between her and herself and made-up characters that she uses to interrogate herself. They’re very funny and I may like them the best of all.

So she’s a character in your novel as are Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgenev and the Empress Eugenie. What was the thought process behind including them as real characters?

Pauline and George Sand’s friendship was very interesting to me and became an important part of the novel as a result of a particular way that they were urging each other on to become a new kind of woman. I mean, each of them were the centers of their households artistically, each of them had their lovers who more or less did what they said. It seemed really important that Lilliet find them.

As for Turgenev, his love for Pauline was so fascinating to me. For him, this led to a hilarious kind of scandal: the Russian people were horrified that he was living in this foreign country with this woman, Pauline, and they essentially saw her as this enslaving harlot who had captured their great Russian writer. So on the one-hand when Pauline was in Paris she was treated as too ugly to be a singer and on the other hand as if she were an enslaving sex maniac, a bewitching creature. And that’s when I thought, as a woman you are whatever they need you to be even when you don’t want to be — they just rearrange the elements of the world to make you fit the narrative that they insist is happening. Like, no one thought for a minute that Turgenev had chosen this life even though he relentlessly chose it again and again and again. He followed Pauline and George everywhere. He built that house next to theirs in Germany. And then he lived in their apartment upstairs in Paris, and he’s also with them in London during the Franco-Prussian war. He was fully participating in his “enslavement.” Turgenev was very moved by Pauline and in his letters you see him write to friends and he says things like, “Why are all of Tolstoy’s women cows and harlots?” He criticizes the way Tolstoy treats women in his novels. There’s a way in which we’re told constantly that this kind of feminism didn’t exist, but if you look at these letters, they were thinking about this all of the time — it was very important to Turgenev and I think it came in no small part from his love of Pauline.

Pauline Viardot and Ivan Turgenev were so wonderfully rendered. There’s this warmth between them that spilled into everything. At one point Lilliet says that until she met Pauline, she had thought that no such woman as herself existed, and that she would have to be the first one. Reading that, I felt this immense relief because it mattered to me that Viardot and Turgenev were real-life people, an example of people who did things their own way and made it work. It also reminded me of something you have said before about being the first kind of writer that you were when you wrote『Edinburgh』, you were the first gay Korean American writer.

There’s now one more.

That’s what’s so sad to me right now about the death of Justin Chin, who died of a heart attack in December, because when I met him we were both like, “Hey! There’s another one!” We just meant “Asian gay male writers.” And now he’s gone. And that is a huge loss to me.

As you know, Korean culture is extremely homophobic and concerned with money, especially the immigrant culture in the US. I see it all the time with my students. They fear pursuing the arts within the context of an education that is so expensive to their parents. They see it as a kind of betrayal to their parents and so it’s a huge gift for you and I to be able to say that we have parents who didn’t forbid us from pursuing the arts.

But yes, I remember going to the MLA convention and hearing that I was the first — the first Korean American gay author — and it felt as if, suddenly, I was transformed into the first fish to ever walk out of the sea. –laughs–

In writing about Pauline Viardot or Lilliet Berne I wondered if you were actively trying to write about these other firsts of their kind, you know, these extraordinary people.

I was. And I got so lost in the story of Pauline and Turgenev and Lilliet and I loved it so much that I wanted to live there. It would have been so amazing to have incredible people like them hanging out and performing. For me there was a level of pure pleasure, there was no allegorical what have you, I mean, I can guess as to certain psychological reasons why things were compelling to me at the end. But at the time, like when I found out Turgenev was encouraging Pauline to compose because she was losing her voice and he believed in her musical talents, I just thought that was the most beautiful story to be told.

Especially when so many of the other stories are about women who lose their power when they lose the one thing that is beautiful about them. For Turgenev to say, “No, there’s this other part of yourself that you can develop. You still have value as a whole person.” It’s amazing. When I was reading about Viardot and Turgenev I thought, “Oh, this is so powerful, this happiness, what a relief!” It seemed like the counter story to the one about the curse. Have you ever thought that your stories might come true?

It’s funny, while I was working on this book I had an idea for another novel, about the colonization of Mars. I wrote some notes about it, and as I set it aside I started to find news items about people setting up the project, like the kind that I had imagined, the Mars 1 project. –laughs–

Was that weird?

It was weird! I feel like it’s a way of acknowledging that so much of what we do is about the implications of the things that already exist, following them to their natural conclusions. It’s that third thing we imagine somewhere between the two things that are real. And in a sense, it’s not like it comes true — it’s more like we understand the situation quite clearly.

For Lilliet, these predictions exact a terrible cost from her. Do you think it is a powerful thing to be able to predict the future? Or is it a terrible thing?

I don’t know if it’s terrible. Part of the inspiration for the novel is finding both Joan Didion and Oscar Wilde quotes that said something to the effect of, “The fiction that you write does come true.” And it seems like such an interesting thing for two writers so different in time to believe that. What was funny to me was to come up with this curse for singers and then to hear singers say to me, “Oh, yeah, that happens.”

I tell my students that fiction writing is about taking the indications of what you invented, but it’s also about taking the implications of what already exists. About bringing to life the thing that you see that nobody else can see. I try to lead my students in that direction when they’re looking for original material. What is no one describing that you can see? And I suppose that’s where things can get strange.

And dangerous, right?



Sometimes. You know, there’s reasons people keep secrets, right? They don’t want you to know things. I think it’s more dangerous to tell secrets for journalists than for fiction writers, though.

How come?

Well, there’s a guy, Gérard de Villiers, I think he’s French, he’s an ex-intelligence officer and he writes these spy mysteries and a lot of the things he describes come true. People ask him, “Where did you get this information from?” and he’ll never tell them, but it’s widely assumed that he has access to all this intel and uses it to write his novels. So far, no one’s stopping him, nobody’s killed him, but the question is, is there a way to tell the truth and it won’t matter? And is there a way to tell the truth and it will?

So I have a dream for the publicity around your book. I would like a high fashion magazine to do a photoshoot of you dressed in a general’s coat.

With a bear mask?

Yes, with the bear mask under your arm surrounded by models dressed in all the totally drool-worthy dresses described in your book.

–laughs– I feel like that’s perfectly acceptable. I accept that wish and put that out there.

You would be willing?

Oh yeah. What I really want, of course, is for『The Queen of the Night』to be the next theme for the Met Gala. That would be incredible.

Yes, please. That would be magnificent. Is anyone interested in making『The Queen of the Night』into an opera?

Actually, yes, there’s a composer who just reached out, so we’ll see. My agent thinks it would actually be better as a Phantom of the Opera-esque sound musical with musical numbers and maybe some opera in it, but we’ll see.

Is it right that your introduction to opera was through your father?

Sort of, yes, in the sense that I grew up with it. He would run around the house singing Ataviada.

Do you sing opera?

No, no. I only started singing karaoke in the last decade.

You’re embracing your Korean roots.

Yeah, totally. But I really did not have any interest in my male singing voice.

And yet both of your books have singers in them.

I think for me writing is the closest I come to the memory of what it was when I sang.

How so?

It’s as if I would disappear when I sang and I’d feel like the person I was would be replaced by this presence that had all this force and beauty and range. This sort of awkward kid that I was was replaced by all this energy.

You’ve said that when you started writing this book you were trying to get as far away from yourself as you could. How did that go? What was that like?

I think I realized that I can’t get that far away from myself. There’s a thing in alcoholism called “pulling a geographical,” when you just get up and move to another place and hope that solves all your problems.

I’ve heard that can sometimes work.

Every once in a while it works out okay. When I moved to college I joined the crew team and lost 60 pounds and I went back to my hometown and no one recognized me and I thought, “Oh I could just never come back and no one would know.” It was so exhilarating. At first I wanted to get a reaction from people, like, “Oh my God, you’ve lost so much weight,” and then I realized “I don’t give a shit about these people at all. These people used to criticize me as the fat kid.”

You and I met because of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and『Guernica』magazine. You also run the “Dear Readers” series for Ace Hotel, you started this Amtrak residency about a year or two ago, and are involved in so many other things I’m not mentioning here. I’ve run into other writers who’ve told me how you opened doors for them. I feel like there’s a city of people taught by Alexander Chee all running around.

I definitely refer to the Alexander Chee Talent Family, which is made of the former students I have. I suppose it starts with the teaching, and of the things you do while you’re teaching the thing I prefer the most is the mentoring part. But in terms of what I get out of it, I guess most of the time I’m just trying to have fun. It’s been totally fun, the work has been incredibly moving, the Amtrak residency is something I’m really proud of.

Is this stuff something you think about doing or does it just kind of fall in your lap?

I think for me, that’s very simple. If you meet someone and you like their work, why wouldn’t you read more of it? I know a lot of people who don’t want to share contacts because there are certain asks that are major “asks” that you wouldn’t want to give away to someone you don’t know very well. But in a general way, in terms of connecting people, like telling so-and-so that so-and-so might like their work, that doesn’t strike me as an “ask.” That’s like a “Hey, what’s up”. That’s what I feel is normal that a lot of people don’t do.

You also give the best advice.

Thank you. But you know, I think since I’m a first born, being a big brother is kind of a normal thing to me, so I have to watch out for that. Not everyone wants advice, you know? So you have to watch for what you’re assuming is true between you and the other person. But in general, I just see it as a way of existing, I don’t really think about it. But the extent that it actually helps people, I’m incredibly pleased.

I know that you’re working on an essay collection and I wondered if you could tell us anything about it.

I think it’s going to focus primarily on the essays that I’ve written describing the period from 1989 through 2001, so it’s going to span about 12 years.

Where were you then?

The end of college, San Francisco, New York City, Iowa, and then New York again. Primarily New York. Probably mostly, there’s a narrative to them, it’s not an overarching narrative and so it collects essays that I’ve written about everything from the Buckleys to tarot card reading to gay marriage.

In the novel, Lilliet says she wants to smash the cage she had built for herself. And I wondered about the idea of cages that are built for us as opposed to the cages we build for ourselves, and how they’re so linked. How one of the things that can smash those cages is art. Was there anything you were trying to smash while you were writing this book?

I remember being frustrated with the idea that I would only have to write Korean American characters or gay characters but I couldn’t just write whatever the fuck I wanted to write about and in some ways doing this was kind of like a manifesto, you know, there’s nothing wrong with only writing Korean American characters, but, I don’t live like that. I live in a storm of other people. And restricting my ideas to that one piece doesn’t strike me as fiction writing at all. I got an email from Lynn Sharon Shwartz asking, “Why do your interviews always ask about the autobiographical question?” and I tole her, “I feel like it’s because there’s an implicit lack of belief that we can do what we do and so when we do do it, people treat it like we’re sorcerers, like we might be frauds, like we’re crazy.”

Right. And it makes sense then, that as you were doing it you wondered, “who the fuck am I to write a story like this?” But that was part of the joy of reading the book for me. And also that who you chose to write about was a woman who’s also reaching for a story or life larger than one she’d typically be allowed.

Thank you, yeah a reviewer over at『Book Riot』said it read to her like『The Count of Monte Cristo』which I thought was really awesome. I think so many novels of that time are about the one thing that happened to this particular woman, like her whole life. But there’s so many other women who also lived much bigger lives than that.

The book definitely captures that scope, and the breathtaking imagination and sort of nerve that’s necessary to live or tell a story like that.

–laughs– Okay. Thank you. I’ll take that.

Same Same: How closely does ｢The Family Law｣ series follow your book?

Benjamin Law: The book’s a hodge-podge of stories of my life and family, some from the 1970s when my parents came over from Hong Kong and some right up to the 2000s when I came out.

For the series we had to get to the heart of the story. We condensed the timeframe to one hot summer to focus on my parents’ breakup. In reality their split was very protracted but for the sake of the comedy and the drama we condensed it to one hot Queensland summer where nothing will ever be the same.

We wanted to get to the emotional truth of what it’s like when your parents break up when you’re a teenager and we had to be wildly promiscuous with what actually happened. But keep all the teenage humiliation, terror and hilarity.

In coastal Queensland we were one of just a handful of Chinese Australian families. We immediately became the focus of town gossip. For the show we wanted to nail the uniqueness of being a really big family.

And the audience knows Ben’s gay but Ben isn’t quite aware of it yet! In the trailer there’s a scene where Ben peers through a telescope and there’s every opportunity to perve on the hot sister but the telescope trails down to the hot son who’s doing weights in the garage. In terms of sexuality, the audience is ahead of Ben. More to come in series 2.

What was it like coming out as a Chinese Australian?

I came out at 17, which was quite old to come out. Most people have known for a long time by then. But acknowledging it and coming out are two very different things, right? Now I look back and actually 17 is still rather young. In Queensland we finish high school at 17 and I wanted my first year at university, when I’d be 18, to be the year I’d find a boyfriend! Or, you know, have sex! And that would involve being open and comfortable with my sexuality.

First I came out to my best friend Rebecca which gave me the courage to come out to mum who I wanted to come out to first because, one, I wanted her to know, and, two, if she doesn’t know things first she’ll demolish you!

I told my mum I had something to tell her and couldn’t even get the words out. I burst out into tears, and that’s really frightening for a mum. She had to play this horrible guessing game, What’s Wrong With My Son? Her first guess was “Are you on drugs?” And I said no, thinking we’re on the Sunshine Coast where it was really difficult to get drugs even if I’d wanted them.

The second question was “Have you got Rebecca pregnant?” And I was thinking no, definitely getting colder. And her third was “Are you gay?” And I nodded, afraid of whether she’d be angry, or blame herself, or be upset, or be shocked, you know, and her response was so hilarious. She said “Oh, don’t be silly, there’s nothing wrong with being gay! It just means something went wrong in the womb, that’s all!”

So, you know, in her way, she was totally accepting and acknowledging the fact that I’m completely deformed! [laughs]

Oh my God.

I was relieved because I knew my mum well enough. In her way, and in her language, and in her framework, it was just her saying, yeah, it’s like being left-handed. It was a confused way of saying it, it was a hilarious way of expressing it, but I totally knew what she was saying.

For a woman of her generation and background it was her way of telling me she had no problem whatsoever with me being gay. And she doesn’t! In fact, she likes my boyfriend better than she likes me!

Since then how have you found being gay and an Asian-Australian?

My boyfriend and I moved to Sydney a couple of years ago and it feels like the gay Asians run this town! [laughs] It’s a pretty great city to be Asian and gay.

But if I was single it’d be hard. I have single gay Asian friends and the online sexual racism is quite shocking and confronting. I think it reflects a sort of person who, one, hasn’t travelled very much and, two, well, gays, including myself, are not immune from being prejudiced. We forget that sometimes. Just because we’re part of a minority doesn’t mean we can’t be prejudiced ourselves. It’s something to acknowledge.

If there were more Asian Australians in Australian media prejudice would be rarer. What we find attractive or hot is regulated and mediated by the images of what’s presented to us as sexy.

Even gay magazines present a sea of white on their covers. When we aren’t shown images of people in all their diversity we’ve got a very narrow view of what’s attractive. One of the things I’m happy about ｢The Family Law｣ is we’ve got a majority Asian cast – very rare in Australian media.

You watch breakfast television – it’s a sea of white. Most of our drama in Australia – a sea of white. We don’t see our Arab Australians on screen. We don’t see our brown Australians, or our yellow Australians. It limits our scope in what we see as Australian. And attractive.

The commercial networks didn’t have the courage to do your show?

We knew it wasn’t a commercial product, not because of race but tone. I don’t think commercial stations would use an opening sequence of a woman monologuing about what happens to her vagina during childbirth, no matter what race she was! Hopefully, it’s changing. You know, Channel 9 has ｢Love Child｣ withMiranda Tapsell. That one of our biggest commercial TV drama stars is Aboriginal is huge. It should’ve happened a long time ago but I’m glad it’s happening now.

I think in the US especially, where we see African American female leads in ｢Scandal｣ [Kerry Washington] and ｢How to Get Away with Murder｣ [Viola Davis], they’re realising the commercial imperative of coloured faces on screen.

One of the biggest demographics of free-to-air TV in the States is African Americans. Other demographics are migrating to streaming services. There’s a commercial imperative to getting diversity on screen. Given that one in 10 Australians has Asian background you might want to consider us a valuable demographic too! [laughs]

But every Australian – gay, straight, queer, white, non-white, indigenous or otherwise, disabled or otherwise – people are wanting to see their workplaces, their communities, their friendship circles reflected back at them on screen, especially if you live in Australian cities. Our communities aren’t just one colour. We want to see that.

How did your family react to the show?

They’ve seen the trailer and rough cuts. We’re gonna watch the first ep together tonight. I’m flying up to Brisbane for it. I think they’re gonna laugh, they might cry.

Are they gonna hit you?

Probably. I’ll sedate them with alcohol and maybe barbiturates.

The million-dollar question: Is your mum as loud as you paint her?

OMG, she’s worse. In reality, she’s R-rated. The show is the prime-time version. Yes, we can get away with her describing her vagina during childbirth on SBS at 8.30pm but could we get away with how she talks about sex? I’m not too sure.

She’s pretty frank. When we were growing up she’d tell our sisters to make sure they washed thoroughly downstairs or they’d start to grow worms inside their vaginas!

How do you feel about your mum usurping your story as the main character?

LOL! It’s the way it should be. As in real life, Jenny gets all the best lines, because she’s the best mum.

Before the song is released there are a couple things I’d like to share. This song took me a lot of courage to write because I was always apprehensive of the subject it talked about. I’ve been doing this job for a long time and right now I speak not as Amber of f(x) nor “celebrity” Amber, but just Amber. Just plain, simple, human Amber. ｢Borders｣ is more than a song; no glamorous concepts, no “trying to be cool.” Its a raw and real story about reality. Its shares, not only about my personal experiences but of people very close to me. Everyone involved in this project – the producers, my team DPR, the actors, to the staff – were people specifically chosen as they have never given up on me and believed in my vision. For that, I want to thank them for making this possible for me. When you guys listen to ｢Borders｣, there is just one thing i wish everyone could take from it: NEVER give up on yourself. There is always hope in the midst of this dark, demanding world. In the end, live for those that did not get the chance to and just keep fighting. Always, thank you you guys. You guys made it possible.