The Sunday Read: 'The Many Lives of Steven Yeun'

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jay Caspian Kang, the author and narrator of this week’s Sunday Read, spoke with the actor Steven Yeun over Zoom at the end of last year. The premise of their conversations was Mr. Yeun’s latest starring role, in “Minari” — a film about a Korean immigrant family that takes up farming in the rural South. They discussed the usual things: Mr. Yeun’s childhood, his parents and acting career — which includes a seven-year stint on the hugely popular television series “The Walking Dead.” But the topic of conversation kept circling back to something much deeper. Today on The Sunday Read, Jay’s profile and meditation on Asian-American identity.

Transcript

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0:26.0	Hi, I'm Jay Kasperin Kang, a writer at large for the New York Times magazine.
0:35.0	Here's my article, The Many Lies of Stephen Young.
0:45.8	When I was growing up in the 90s, the only Asian American writer I knew was Amy Tan.
0:51.6	Her thick paperbacks, the Joy Luck Club and the Kitchen God's wife were on everyone's
0:55.9	bookshelves.
0:57.3	I, of course, hated Amy Tan because I considered myself a hard-edged thinker.
1:02.0	Her books, which are mostly about industrious, dignified immigrants, embodyed a type of
1:07.0	minstrelcy in which the Asian American writer gives the white audience bits of tossed
1:11.4	off oriental wisdom.
1:13.0	Isn't hate merely the result of wounded love, or a few parables about golden black tigers
1:19.8	or what have you?
1:21.7	If I had been asked back then what I planned to write about, I might have jestered towards
1:26.0	the beaten-ex or cutting down trees in the woods or heroin or jazz, but the only concrete
1:31.6	pledge I could have given you was, I will not write the Joy Luck Club.
1:37.4	In graduate school while in an MFA program, I'd walk to the bookstore and wander among
	...

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