Mika Ellison

Yeah, so Belly's obviously Weijin.

We see both of her parents enough that it's pretty obvious.

But the whole story is this kind of her being in this wealthy country club environment where most of the other characters are white and wealthy, including both of the love interests.

And that kind of stereotype of that privileged Weijin just goes unspoken here.

The fact that she's mixed Asian just doesn't really come up, even though, like, for me, it totally would.

I think there's this idea that if Waysian people look white enough or if we fit in well enough, we'll eventually just assimilate into whiteness.

It's this kind of model minority idea that's often attached to non-mixed Asian people too.

That if we're well behaved and white acting enough, Asian people can just like assimilate.

But that's not actually how things work.

Sometimes Waysians get those privileges attached to whiteness and sometimes we don't.

Exactly.

And that's another thing the Asian fixation misses.

There are a lot of mixed Asian Americans who aren't white at all.

And they tend to have very different experiences with representation.

A lot of times, their Asian-ness is still invisible.

And they really can't have it both ways because people just sort them into the other category.

Myra Washington is an associate professor at the University of Utah.

She's Black and Korean.

And she says in her experience, Even standing next to my Korean mother, people will be like, no.

And also, some of the older white and Asian mixed folks I talk to, let's say from the Hapa generation, don't actually like the term Waisian.