Luna Club and Tea popup? Check. DJ? Check. Geek out on Jeff Yang with a book signing? (RISE: A Pop History of Asian American from the Nineties to Now) Check. Amplify Asian did it again.
How did you get started?
Jeff: I created a magazine called A magazine, Inside Asian America, literally in the 90s and it lasted through the 90s for 10 years. And then the dot com revolution or evolution no more. But in that period of time, I saw the emergence of this community in a sort of unique passion to find itself beginning some exploring what it meant. And for me, as somebody who can that neuron was was somebody who chose to embrace the Asian American identity and culture as something I want to make part of my life, my profession. It was a magical thing. But it took two more decades and decades more to get to the point where today and I went from, you know, kind of that magazine to being one of the first TV critics with a regular you know, critical needs. Firstly, Bill invoice and then the central Chronicle. I ended up running for the Wall Street Journal. And then my life changed with the burgeoning with my eldest son, Hudson Yang who unaccountably got a part of this television show…
How did this book come about?
Jeff: When we began the journey of writing this book, well, first we wanted to just simply document that we did exist over these three decades, right? Because it was basically a year after Crazy Rich Asians kind of knocked things into a tilt in Hollywood, right? All of a sudden people like oh wait, Asian people can be on screen more than one of the ones and might still sell tickets and you know what, we can make money off this. So come on in, join the table… Let’s tell the story. Let’s preserve all this stuff that people might have forgotten... We thought of the book as part… yes, celebration, Asian joy, nostalgia, but also part-whole chest and time capsule, and the blueprint in case you have to build everything all over again.