From All-American Girl to Fresh Off the Boat.

In the 20 years between Margaret Cho's All-American Girl and the announcement that ABC has picked up Fresh Off the Boat, there's been an influx of content created by Asian Americans on new media platforms. When ABC cancelled All-American Girl, there was the implication that putting an Asian-American family on network television just wasn't going to work. "It was an idea that was good, but it didn't execute well," 8Asians blogger and co-editor Joz Wang told me over the phone last week. "Nobody wanted to touch the subject again. Why else would it have taken 20 years [for Fresh Off the Boat to happen]?"

Joz has a point: the sharp criticisms from inside and outside of the Asian-American community contributed to the downfall of All-American Girl, and the show never got a chance to fix what went wrong.

And yet, the hunger to see more Asian Americans on the small screen never went away--a desire amplified by the rise of YouTubers from comedian Ryan Higa to beauty vlogger Michelle Phan. According to a 2011 New York Times article, three of the top 20 most-subscribed-to YouTube channels belonged to Asian Americans. One look at the documentary Uploaded: The Asian American Movement, and you'll see exactly what's going on: without a space at the "mainstream media" table, a new generation of artists went to another table that was created with the goal in mind of reaching audiences directly--audiences that might not go to the movies often or subscribe to cable television. Content creators on YouTube get to stay in control of the product they put online, and that's undoubtedly appealing for the Asian-American community.

In 2012, Wong Fu Productions premiered a four-episode TV series on YouTube called Home is Where the Hans Are in which a Caucasian guy comes home after an extended period abroad to meet his new stepfamily, who turns out to be Chinese.

Confrontation is never easy. Some people say they're confrontational by nature, but when the going gets tough, they're the first ones off the boat. Recently, I confronted a friend over something that was bothering me. She's always painted herself as a confrontational person herself, so I figured, "Let's do this, let's hash it out." She responded by cutting me out of her life and accusing me of being someone I'm not. Her judgement that my life was perfect and that I made her feel insecure was hard to hear, and we haven't really spoken since. In typical "water off a duck's back" fashion, I've been courteous and kind to her, messaging her occasionally and forwarding emails with fun summery things, but she's made it pretty clear she's not interested in being too friendly anymore.

There's this quote that gets shared all over Pinterest and Tumblr all the time: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." 

I think we all say things we regret from time-to-time, and real friends know when to take a breath, spend a day or two cooling off, and then pick things back up with the understanding and the knowledge that they've hurt one another and they'll do better--because a friendship is worth more than one's pride and ego. You can still be close to someone you've fought with. Fighting doesn't mean it's all over.

But when you prioritize your pride over a friend, you lose something important: not just that friend, but something inside yourself as well. Remember that Boy Meets World episode where the gang gets into a prank war and then fights over who "belongs" in what group? And then the fighting drags on and the episode flash forwards into the future, where everyone is still fighting and hasn't spoken in years, but then Eric shows up at their college reunion and reads his manifesto: "Lose one friend, lose all friends, lose yourself." When asked why he didn't write anything else but that, he responds, "Because nothing else seemed important."

You can stand in the midst of a storm and declare you are stronger than the pain coming your way, but shouldn't you want someone to celebrate it with when it's over? I don't believe we are meant to walk through this life alone. I crave that others believe the same.

"Everything changed for me on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed. On that very day--December 7, the FBI came and they took my father."