Natasha Liu Bordizzo first made a splash when she was cast in teen dystopian series The Society. Most recently, Natasha starred alongside Sydney Sweeney and Justice Smith in the thrilling Voyeurs, and has scored a role in the upcoming Ahsoka.
As we celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, get ready to dive into a fantastic array of young adult novels that shine a light on the lives of South Asian teens. These books are expanding the stories you see, reflecting the rich diversity within South Asia and its diaspora. With each passing year, more and more exciting books featuring South Asian protagonists are hitting the shelves, addressing the need for better representation in literature. Although there's still a long way to go before every South Asian experience is represented, these YA books offer an awesome starting point for exploring these vibrant and diverse stories.
Nikki, an aspiring photographer, accompanies her family on a trip to Dubai to celebrate the five days of Diwali in style. It should be the trip of a lifetime if Yash, the boy next door--with whom Nikki has a rocky history--weren't on board. Oblivious to the tension, Nikki's matchmaking family encourages Nikki to get better acquainted with Yash. Turns out a lot can change on a 12-hour flight beyond just continents. But can betrayals and conflicting ambitions be set aside long enough for the two teens to discover the true meaning of the Festival of Lights?
Sy is a timid seventeen-year-old queer Indian-Muslim boy who placed all his bets at happiness on his boyfriend Farouk...who then left him to try and "fix the world." Sy was too chicken to take the plunge and travel with him and is now stuck in a dead-end coffee shop job. All Sy can do is wish for another chance.... Although he never expects his wish to be granted.
SINGAPORE -- Every year, clinical psychologist Carol Balhetchet sees numerous patients in their teens or early 20s come through her Singapore office. Many suffer from depression, anorexia and other conditions; some have attempted suicide before consulting her.
Alleged Asian bias: The Tesla and SpaceX mogul voiced the assertion while responding to a tweet about an ABC7 News story about an Asian teen rejected by multiple colleges despite having impressive academic credentials. While the "left" can encompass a range of interpretations, it is frequently used to describe groups associated with the Democratic Party.
Through fun and interactive activities using literature, visual and performance arts, and multimedia, kids and teens have the unique opportunity to participate in an array of cultural art classes, workshops, and camps. Important themes include Asian and Asian American history, contemporary issues, diaspora studies, and multiculturalism.
Race, ethnicity, and cultural identity are heavily considered in our Los Angeles, California and New York City, New York-based therapy practice. So, our Asian American therapists remember their acculturation and assimilation journey. This shared experience is another point of connection where a teen client can share their struggles. They can have a safe person to process these difficult emotions with. And, explore options tailored to their cultural experience.
Acculturation is the process in which Asian Americans adopt some parts of the dominant cultures, but still hold onto customs, traditions, religion, thought processes, beliefs, and values of their own culture. Assimilation is when Asian Americans get absorbed completely into the dominant culture. Our Asian American therapists are fully aware that Asian Americans ebb and flow within the spectrum of these two realities. Having a mental health therapist who understands this process can provide a sense of understanding. An acknowledgment for the struggles dealt with. And, help your teen reconstruct their identity to celebrate their cultural, racial, and ethnic identity.
Sure, it's a good thing that there are East Asian characters being seen on white-dominated television shows at all! I have been trying so hard to project myself onto the television that I thought Gilbert Gottfried was full East Asian until, like, last year. But if art holds up a mirror to the world, today's East Asian "teens" like me are pretty much just less obvious versions of long-known stereotypes. The East Asians on everyone's favourite teen dramas are thinly veiled behind immaterial characteristics but they aren't fooling me, an intellectual. We still never get to partake in steamy love scenes with teachers, we're not included in major love triangles, we never get to be the top-dog in the friend group, and often our storylines altogether don't make any damn sense! The 2017 versions of Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles are certainly more reasonable, but East Asians can still only be understood through a few lazy characteristics. And just because they're less recognizable than the babbling nerd, the rude girl, or the creepy shy guy doesn't mean they're not just as harmful.
Today's East Asian teens still descend from a recent heritage of weird background characters. In Pretty Little Liars, Mona is an impressive straight-A student who knows how to speak French and hack computers. Her plot becomes dizzying and inexplicable when she dies, is thrown a Hawaiian-themed funeral, and ultimately comes back to life so that she can be admitted into all of the Ivy League schools. Glee's female East Asian is named Tina Cohen-Chang (an interracial last name for a South Korean-born actor), she speaks with a stutter and she is initially very shy. Her storyline becomes very confusing very quickly when, oh no: her stutter is fake! Since she is so shy, she had forced herself to stutter so that she can push people away, obviously! A white character moralizes the situation, Tina drops the stutter, and the narrative is never mentioned again. She also, by the way, ends up dating the aforementioned white character and then dumping him for the other East Asian guy in the show with whom she says she bonded at "Asian camp". I can only assume that "Asian camp" is coded language for "both our parents are immigrants and we met at church." I have literally never watched Teen Wolf and I don't understand the premise but my friend Mac Chapin does and he told me over text message that there is an East Asian girl in it who "literally carries a sword and gets inhabited by a Japanese cat spirit thing." My personal favourites as a teen were 90210, which didn't even try, and Gossip Girl, which came close to representing me with one (white) character named Celeste. But she disappeared from the show without any explanation. I have learned to make my expectations for representation on teen dramas very low, and they are still not being met.
The other East Asian at the school in Thirteen Reasons Why is Zach Dempsey played by Singaporean-born Ross Butler, who seems to shirk singularity by being a hot, jock, star basketball player. But psych! He is actually secretly a brilliant student who is willing to give up his basketball scholarships to be a marine biologist. His mother, who is also Asian, is thrilled at the latter prospect. I'm not sure why this aspect of his identity is included. Other than preventing him from shirking a stereotype altogether (so close!!!), it also has no bearing on his personality or character arc whatsoever. If anything, it provides a slightly higher incentive to not want to be culpable for a girl's death (convicts make bad marine biologists?) but there are otherwise no apparent effects. The only time Zach even mentions this sidestory himself is when he turns down his bros' requests to skip class with them saying, "I can't miss bio." Maybe the writers worried that the jock stereotype alone would be simply implausible on a face as Asian as Zach's. In any case, I'm as confused about his passionate affinity for biology as I am about homosexual parents being Courtney's entire personality.
Luckily we get another shot at complexity for Ross Butler, the literal same actor from Thirteen Reasons Why, when he plays Reggie in Riverdale, the other Netflix teen show people are talking about. In the Archie-comic-turned-teen-murder-mystery, Butler plays an equally useless hot jock star-football player. Maybe the Netflix shows are like the Marvel universe but instead of having super powers and origin stories, they are just East Asians with intangible personalities. Football is different than basketball, OK, but I truly cannot confirm whether or not Butler wears a different letter jacket in the two shows. His main storyline on Riverdale exists to threaten Archie, the beautiful white-passing protagonist, who is rivalling him for captain of the football team. As soon as Reggie's story begins, it becomes extraneous when other, boring, music-related things happen in Archie's life which cause him to reject the captain position. With no agency of his own, his story wraps up in one episode. Zach, the Riverdale version of Zach, and Courtney are puzzling, which carelessly dissipates their chances at being anything but inconsequential fodder for the stage behind the action. When they are refused logical narratives, they become less human. When East Asian characters are unnatural and singular, we seem less human. We're easy to make assumptions about, call names, and beat up in Zara and on United Airplanes.
It's great that East Asians faces are on young peoples' television (computer) screens, but the ones I have had as role models are unsatisfying and riddled with inconsistency. At time of publication, I feel pretty sure that as a teen I was supposed to threaten my white peers' academic and/or athletic ventures, receive a million scholarships, reveal an unlikely aspect of my life, and then disappear forever. I'm not ready to celebrate my representation until there are as many distinct, complicated, and different personalities for young East Asians as there are for young white jocks. I guess Gilbert Gottfried will have to do for now.
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