Amy Sun '11

If you were to conduct a Google search for the term “Asian American popular culture,” you would be faced with a series of scholarly-sounding sociological studies. If you are lucky, you might come across a semi-interesting blog post a few hundred search terms in. So what’s the deal? Perhaps my search terms are a bit broad, but still—where are all the Asians? Surely there must be at least a few Asians and Asian Americans doing cool things, right? Luckily, I’m not the first person who has noticed this lack of press. Giant Robot, a bi-monthly magazine about Asian and Asian American popular culture, was founded back in 1994 to address this very problem. This past summer, through the generous support of the MCAN Scholarship (which covered my gas expenses to commute), I was able to intern at the Giant Robot magazine office in Los Angeles. Not only did I learn a huge range of valuable skills—writing press releases, fact checking, searching for public domain photos, content editing, using Adobe InDesign, calibrating a printer, writing reviews, transcribing interviews—but I also discovered an entire world of Asian and Asian American artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, videogame creators, and just generally cool people. There’s no doubt that activism and scholarly work are important in challenging stereotypes about Asian Americans, but there’s definitely something to be said for a magazine that features someone like Kenny Anderson, a half-Japanese professional skateboarder. Now how’s that for breaking a stereotype? Watch the video.