A few years ago my Brooklyn apartment flooded and I ended up staying temporarily in the room of an aspiring actress I barely knew. Her name was Poppy Liu. She later landed a lead role on a new animated show about Asian American twentysomethings in New York. When the trailer dropped people on social media immediately mocked it, and some used the moment to ridicule ‘Asian American art’ more broadly. That reaction is familiar: Asian Americans themselves often lampoon the familiar tropes of diasporic storytelling, and outsiders sometimes treat that body of work as a small, laughable subgenre.
I want to push back. There is a lot of excellent, surprising work by and about Asian Americans, and the way we define ‘Asian American art’ is part of the problem. Two narrow definitions tend to dominate: art made by Asian Americans, and art explicitly about Asian American life or culture. In practice, works are usually labeled Asian American only if they satisfy both. That creates a tiny target and makes repetition inevitable.
This strict framing excludes two valuable categories. First, it discounts work about Asian America that is created by non-Asian artists. There are fewer of those today than in earlier eras because of increased sensitivity around representation, but when well handled, cross-cultural portrayals can be illuminating in ways insiders’ perspectives sometimes are not. Second, and more importantly, it often excludes art made by Asian Americans when the subject matter is not ‘Asian’ in any obvious way. If an Asian American writer pens a story about white characters, robots, or imaginary worlds, that work is rarely folded into discussions of Asian American art even though the creator’s history and sensibility inform the work.
Consider a few consequences. Popular works like Fresh Off the Boat, The Joy Luck Club, Crazy Rich Asians, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Past Lives, or American Born Chinese rightly get attention, but they are only a sliver of what Asian American creators make. The pool of ‘Asian American’ subject matter itself is limited and, like all immigrant subcultures, often ephemeral. Assimilation is real: subsequent generations mix, intermarry, and absorb mainstream culture, which will naturally shrink the audience and the sense of a distinct, long-lived reservoir of shared anecdotes.
If we want a richer sense of what Asian American art can be, we should treat any art created by Asian Americans as part of that tradition: works about anyone, anything, or nowhere in particular. That broadened lens reveals a diverse and impressive array of accomplishments. Here are examples I keep returning to:
1) Adrian Tomine’s comics. His short stories and graphic collections capture generational loneliness, longing, and small moral failures with tenderness and sting. Tomine’s work is a masterclass in observation and restraint.
2) Monstress, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda. A dark, sumptuous fantasy series mixing steampunk and cosmic horror. It pairs ambitious worldbuilding with striking art and complex characters.
3) The first season of Beef. An anthology series that used Asian American settings and characters to probe class, grievance, and identity in ways that felt fresh, cruel, and deeply human.
4) Atlanta and the work of Hiro Murai. Atlanta is a landmark in Black American storytelling; having an Asian American director and visual auteur like Murai at its creative center shows how Asian artists contribute powerfully outside strictly Asian-themed narratives. Murai’s music videos and television work demonstrate a visual sensibility that elevates whatever story he touches.
5) Japanese Breakfast and Crying in H Mart. Michelle Zauner’s music and memoir blend personal grief, memory, and cultural detail into art that resonates far beyond any single demographic.
6) Wisp (Natalie Lu). A highlight of the shoegaze revival, creating immersive, nostalgic soundscapes that connect to broader indie currents.
7) Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee. A wildly inventive science fiction trilogy whose premise and mechanics push the genre into new, mind-bending territory.
8) Ted Chiang’s short fiction. High-concept stories that combine rigorous ideas with moving human arcs. His work has reshaped what literary science fiction can do in this century.
9) Jade City, by Fonda Lee. A powerful urban-fantasy take on family, power, and organized crime in a city steeped in East Asian influence.
10) How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu. A wry, melancholic novel about time travel and familial reconciliation that uses genre tropes to explore emotional truth.
11) Nothing, Except Everything, a short film by Wesley Wang. A surreal, artful short made by a young filmmaker that led to larger opportunities because its ambition caught the eye of established directors.
12) Plants vs. Zombies. OK, a game rather than traditional ‘art’ for some, but it’s an example of mainstream entertainment created by Asian American developers that reached a vast audience and shaped many childhoods.
This list is not exhaustive. It just scratches the surface of the different forms, genres, and tones Asian American creators work in. Some of the most interesting contributions are works that don’t fit the expected playbook — not family-memoir relics or immigrant-sufferance catharses, but speculative, absurdist, formal, or pop projects that reflect the creators’ experiences in subtle ways.
Finally, a brief word to the snarky critics: yes, some tropes have been overused, and parody is a healthy part of any culture’s artistic conversation. But many of the milestone stories that once seemed modest or familiar helped open doors for new creators. Those doors are now producing a much broader set of voices and experiments. If we redefine Asian American art to include any significant work by Asian Americans — across genres and subjects — we get a far richer, less repetitive picture. That larger view is worth defending.
