Broadening What We Call Asian American Art

In 2015 my Brooklyn apartment flooded and my landlord put me up temporarily in his girlfriend’s room. She was Poppy Liu, an aspiring actor from Minnesota—later a voice actor on the upcoming animated Netflix show DANG!, about three Asian Americans in New York. When the trailer appeared, online reaction was predictably mixed: some mockery, some cruelty, and a familiar strain of commentary that treats “Asian American art” as a tired, repetitive genre.

That’s not a new phenomenon. Asian Americans often join the chorus of critics in part because certain themes—striving immigrant parents, awkward school experiences, identity essays—have been repeated so often they feel formulaic. But dismissing the whole field on that basis is too narrow. It ignores the variety of work Asian Americans produce and the ways ownership of storytelling has shifted in recent years.

One big problem is how we define “Asian American art.” There are two obvious ways to think about it: art made by Asian Americans, and art made about Asian Americans or their cultures. In popular discussion, a work usually earns the label only when it satisfies both. That double requirement slices the cultural landscape very thin.

That narrow definition excludes two important categories. First, it ignores excellent works about Asian themes created by non-Asian artists. Ethos in recent decades has discouraged such cross-cultural storytelling, so fewer non-Asian creators attempt those narratives. As a result, some potentially insightful outsider perspectives never appear.

Second—and more important—it excludes most art made by Asian Americans that isn’t explicitly about their ethnicity. If a story has Asian American creators but centers on sci-fi, fantasy, crime, or universal human themes without foregrounding the immigrant experience, it’s often not recognized as Asian American art. That shrinks the category to a handful of recognizable titles: films and shows that foreground family, food, assimilation, and intergenerational conflict. Those works are valuable, but they don’t exhaust what Asian Americans are making.

There’s also a demographic reality: Asian Americans are a small, diverse, and rapidly assimilating portion of the U.S. population. As communities intermarry and generations move beyond enclave identities, the specific second-generation narratives that dominated earlier decades will likely feel less central. That makes treating “Asian American art” as a permanent, self-contained genre problematic.

Instead, we should widen our frame. Any art created by Asian Americans should count as part of Asian American creativity, even when its subject matter is elsewhere—white protagonists, imaginary worlds, robots, stolen time, or pure genre play. Doing so lets us recognize the breadth of contributions and breaks the feedback loop where only certain stories get attention.

Here are a few examples, not exhaustive but representative, of work by Asian American creators that shows how varied and original this art can be:

- Adrian Tomine (comics): His short comics and graphic novels capture suburban loneliness, generational awkwardness, and the peculiar emotional weather of modern adulthood with a sharp eye for detail and human failing.

- Monstress (Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda): A lavish, adult fantasy graphic novel that mixes steampunk and cosmic horror. It’s notable for its scope, beautiful art, and layered characters, not for being an immigrant memoir.

- BEEF (Season 1): Lee Sung Jin’s anthology show uses interpersonal grudges to explore corners of American life—working-class Korean Americans and Japanese American artists among them—but it succeeds as cinema and social observation, not just ethnic anecdote.

- Atlanta and Hiro Murai: Donald Glover’s series is a landmark of Black American storytelling. Yet one of the show’s defining visual voices is Asian American director Hiro Murai, whose work demonstrates how creators of any background can shape stories outside the narrow gate of “their” identity.

- Japanese Breakfast and Crying in H Mart (Michelle Zauner): Zauner’s band is musically adventurous and genre-defying; her memoir about loss and food reached wide audiences because it tells a human story, not only a cultural case study.

- Wisp (Natalie Lu): Part of a shoegaze revival, an example of Asian American musicians contributing to scenes that are not defined by ethnicity.

- Ninefox Gambit (Yoon Ha Lee): Weird, original science fiction that plays with logic and culture on a cosmic scale—a reminder that Asian American novelists are energizing genre fiction.

- Ted Chiang (short stories): Chiang’s high-concept speculative fiction pairs rigorous ideas with emotional clarity. Stories like “Story of Your Life” became a major film (Arrival), showing the reach of such work.

- Jade City (Fonda Lee): Urban fantasy with crime-family dynamics inspired by East Asian settings; it reads like The Godfather with supernatural stakes.

- How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Charles Yu): A poignant, meta time-travel novel about grief and family told with formal inventiveness.

- Nothing, Except Everything (Wesley Wang): A short surreal film made by a young Asian American filmmaker that caught the attention of established directors—evidence that fresh voices can emerge in any medium.

- Plants vs. Zombies: Even in casual entertainment like pioneering casual games, creators with Asian heritage have had cultural impact and popular reach.

These examples illustrate two points. First, Asian American creators work across forms and genres—comics, fantasy, TV, music, experimental film, blockbuster games—and much of that work doesn’t fit the narrow immigrant-memoir template. Second, early successes that did foreground Asian American stories (the films and shows people often cite) mattered because they opened doors. They built the infrastructure and audience that allow Asian American artists today to write broadly and take creative risks.

So when people mock “Asian American art” for being predictable, they’re missing the larger picture. Part of the solution is simply to be less rigid in our categorization. Recognize art by Asian Americans even when it’s not about being Asian American. Celebrate the creators’ range, not just a handful of familiar tropes.

Critique has value—tropes can tire, and lazy storytelling deserves to be called out. But let’s also defend the large, diverse, and still-expanding body of work by Asian American artists. If we broaden our definition, we’ll notice far more originality, risk-taking, and influence than stereotypes allow.