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[paper sliding]
[upbeat music playing]
[woman] When I was a kid, it was, like, have you ever had
Lucky Charms,
and you pour out the Lucky Charms
and you get, like, a bowl of cereal and three marshmallows,
That's what it felt like to me,
that there were three Asian-American marshmallows.
The Yellow Ranger in Power Rangers...
The Yellow Power Ranger...
Um...
Data from The Goonies was one of my favorites.
Margaret Cho on All-American Girl...
Michelle Kwan in figure skating.
I thought maybe Lois Lane could be mixed race,
-like I am. -Captain Planet.
[interviewer] Captain Planet is Asian?
Not Asian, but there was an Asian character
who had a dolphin friend.
[dolphin chirps]
[upbeat music playing]
The Baby-Sitters Club is a series of books that came out in the 80's and 90's.
[Sarah Kuhn] It follows a group of 13-year-old middle schoolers
who are friends
and they decide to form a business
by babysitting the local kids in their neighborhood.
They're really concerned about, um, quality child care...
[laughs]
which now seems, um...
a little odd that they-- that was like their passion: babysitting.
There's always a new incident or adventure.
There's fun drama.
There's boy drama, of course.
Stacey's going through an issue with her dad.
What's this jealousy when you think Mary has a new best friend?
Going shopping, babysitting, spending time with her friends,
going on cruises to Disney World.
The Baby-Sitters Club was my childhood.
I had...
not only a really big collection of Baby-Sitters Club books at home,
I also would check them out at the library periodically
and even, like, check out old favorites.
I voraciously read through a good chunk,
primarily through the Scholastic Book Club orders.
[sighs] Y'all know what that is, I mean...
I was reading them. My friends were reading them.
Once I got into it, it was like...
drugs for me.
We've got the sleeping bag.
I've got a bag. Um, I had a necklace.
I had t-shirts. There were dolls.
I had a CD-ROM game.
I spent many hours on it.
We would call each other by those character names.
We would try to dress like those characters.
[rewinding]
Of course I was Claudia.
"Suddenly, I sat up.
All I could think about
were Milky Way bars and Ring-Dings and Oreos.
Those were going to be the subject of my next art project.
I could see it so clearly,
the series of pop art pieces:
'Junk-Food Fantasy by Claudia Kishi.'
The idea was brilliant.
I couldn't wait to get started."
[Phil Yu] Claudia Kishi is vice president of The Baby-Sitters Club.
She's also Japanese American.
She loves junk food. She loves art.
Kooky, eclectic, and...
ahead of her time.
I loved that she had hollowed-out books.
I feel like that's something I still want,
is, like, hollowed-out books to-- to hide all of my candy.
[Yumi Sakugawa] She's cool enough to have her own landline in her bedroom,
unheard of when you're a 13-year-old girl.
Usually...
um, the Asian character
or the woman of color character
is the one you feel like you have to be, right?
If you're playing Harry Potter, you have to be Cho Chang.
Whereas I feel like Claudia is the one
everyone seems to want to be.
"I love to dress in a way that some people
here in Stoneybrook might call...
outrageous."
"At the moment I'm wearing lavender plaid cuffed pants
with suspenders..."
"White tights with clocks on them."
"I was wearing a man's paisley vest I found at a yard sale..."
"Huge pretend emeralds..."
"Electric pink ankle boots."
"I've got earrings shaped like Christmas tree lights
that blink on and off."
Oh, my God.
"Was it too much? I shook my head.
I looked great."
[Sarah Kuhn] Claudia's style to me is very, like,
tween girl meets Asian auntie.
I feel like Claudia...
knew what hipster fashion was gonna be
20 years later.
For an Asian American, or any woman of color character,
to be the cool one is so unusual.
She is just a really awesome character
who I felt like kind of busted through
all the model minority stereotypes.
"My family is conservative, but I'm wild.
My sister and I have next to nothing in common.
She's super smart and likes school.
My parents think she's wonderful.
I wouldn't admit this to just anybody,
but I have a feeling
that I'm a big disappointment to my parents."
[whispers] Same. [laughs]
That was such a mood.
That's like...
That was such a, like...
a big mood for, like--
This is why I related to Claudia so much.
[inhales deeply]
Janine is like the kind of daughter that every...
that I felt that, like,
my mom would've wanted, and I was definitely not.
And I...
would constantly...
have this specter of...
the perfect daughter...
kind of...
hanging over me
'cause I felt very aware that I was not this person.
I felt like Claudia.
I wanted to follow my heart and do creative things.
I wanted to do art.
I wanted to draw. I wanted to write.
Claudia was so... unapologetic about...
who she was.
She really showed that you could be an artist, that you could be creative.
Claudia Kishi was this role model that just...
hit me exactly right.
Like, "Oh, this is like a puzzle piece that fits right into my heart."
"'The Lowells are prejudiced,' said Kristy in a rush.
'Claud, they didn't like you because you're Japanese.
Jessi, Mrs. Lowell wouldn't even let you in her house
because you're African-American.'
My mouth dropped open.
I could feel my hands trembling and my cheeks burning.
'That's-- That's not fair!'"
[sighs]
Congratulations, Claudia.
You just learned a few things about good old-fashioned racism.
I thought about the cover of "Keep Out, Claudia!"
and I remember, like, it was her standing outside the door
with these Trump-looking white kids
looking at her judgingly. I thought it was like,
"What if these covers were really truthful?"
I just thought, like, it'd be a great way to talk about some microaggressions.
Things that Asians have to deal with every day,
that Claudia probably would have to deal with,
but they never addressed in the books.
There is definitely that quality of... um...
I guess, othering, for sure, where that a lot of these stories are being told
from the perspectives of young white girls.
They, you know, somewhat problematically made a point to describe her
as always having almond-shaped eyes and... um...
jet-black hair
and super beautiful skin, even though she eats tons of junk food.
[Phil] First time I read someone described as "almond-shaped eyes."
And I was like, "What does that even mean?"
In terms of racial representation it definitely, like...
How do I put this? I noticed that--
most of the people were white.
[CB Lee] When you don't see yourself in media,
when you don't see mirrors of yourself,
you go on thinking, "I'm broken," or...
"I'm not normal," or "I don't exist."
These thoughts,
they're kind of subconscious, but they, um...
They're pervasive, especially when you go on thinking that the world...
is-- When you perceive the world...
as a world without you in it.
I remember, um,
the person with the really heavy cartoonish accent.
And a lot of disposable side characters and things like that that.
That sort of generalized sense of being
othered in media,
of being the perpetual foreigner,
of never being American.
And I do remember that
manifesting in school
with every kid asking me where I was from, um,
or pulling their eyes back to sort of, like,
make fun of me.
So, I definitely remember, um,
how it affected me in real life.
As someone who grew up, like, with-- with a Thai mom and a white dad, um,
the Asian narratives I saw didn't always jive with my experience,
which contributed to my questions of identity.
[gong echoing]
So, seeing someone like Claudia,
who was kind of forging her own path, definitely
helped me feel more connected to, um, my own identity.
Just knowing there's not one way to be an Asian person.
I can just be me and that's fine.
"I pulled out my box of 64 Crayola crayons with the sharpener.
I sighed with happiness,
and then I began to draw.
My beautiful butterfly was finished."
"'Claudia!' Said Miss Packet sternly.
'Is this some kind of joke?'
I could not answer her. If I had, I would have cried."
So, Mimi hears about this incident.
Mimi, of course, this...
awesome grandma who totally gets Claudia,
who embraces Claudia's artsy side,
and she's not gonna let this slide.
So she goes up to the teacher.
"She said, 'Miss Packet,
I would like you please to respect my Claudia's intelligence and imagination.
You asked the children to draw themselves the way they see themselves,
and my Claudia sees herself as a free spirit, like a butterfly.
So, that is what she drew.'"
Mic drop! Fuck, yes!
[laughs] Sorry, I didn't mean to swear. Um...
Go, Mimi.
It was such a beautiful story, especially...
since Asian American...
children,
they grow up being told by their elders to-- to not stand out too much,
to not create waves, to fit in with the crowd.
For an Asian American person I felt like it was...
extra special,
the idea that we can...
be our true selves and not...
hide it from the world.
Oh, my God.
Oh...
-[dreamy music playing] -[pages turning]
In 2013, I made a Zine called
"Claudia Kishi: My Asian American and Female Role Model of the 90's."
It was just so exciting to see how it struck a chord
with other Asian American women readers.
It was sort of, like,
magical to realize we'd all been having
the same experience, you know, in different towns,
everywhere reading these books,
before we had a way of connecting with each other.
You can always tell when somebody is a Claudia Kishi.
There's a certain swagger and there's definitely...
There's definitely a feeling of camaraderie
when you see another Asian girl
that maybe doesn't fit that standard stereotype and,
at the end of the day none of us really fit the stereotype.
Her legacy is that she's moved beyond just this character.
Kids who grew up in the 90's are now adults
making their way into the world, creating their own works.
I am a comic book artist,
illustrator, all-around interdisciplinary artist.
[Phil Yu] "Angry Asian Man" is a blog
I started back in 2001.
I'm working on The Baby-Sitters Club as a series with Netflix.
I write books and comic books
about Asian American superheroines.
I'm the graphic novelist currently working on The Baby-Sitters Club adaptations.
I'm the author of The Sidekick Squad series.
It's about a group of queer teens that take on a corrupt government agency.
"Fashion Forecasts" is a futuristic collection of intergenerational,
intersectional Asian American fashion designs.
Probably the biggest theme that connects my work is--
I call it "Asian girls having fun."
I love to tell stories about friendship, fantasy,
being more than you are when you come together.
It's a way to have conversations about who you are as Asian Americans.
The girls are gonna be dealing with issues happening now.
You know, transgender rights, prejudices against same-sex parents...
The main characters are Chinese and Vietnamese like me,
and she's bisexual like me.
[Gele] There's always gonna be a challenge to make sure
that we're seen as more than just a fad or a sidekick.
[Sarah] You can be a main character. Have your own story.
You can tell your own story however you want.
[Phil] At some point I realized
I didn't need permission to tell it or for someone else to tell it for me.
I wanna see people like me doing cool shit. [laughs]
[upbeat music playing]
[CB Lee] I remember hanging out with friends on the playground.
Imagine, like, five or six Asian American girls.
[chipmunk voices speaking]
[punches]
We had that fight about who gets to be Claudia, because...
you know, we're so thirsty to be seen.
We're thirsty for those crumbs of representation.
We're tired of just having crumbs. We want the whole cookie.
We're gonna go out and bake our own cookies
and put them out so everyone can enjoy them.
["Claudia Kishi" by The Linda Lindas playing]
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Her style looks funky, cool and fun ♪
♪ And to me she is number one ♪
♪ She's not afraid to wear all pink ♪
♪ She don't care what people think ♪
♪ I am Claudia Kishi ♪
♪ You are Claudia Kishi ♪
♪ She, a Claudia Kishi ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh... ooh ooh ♪