Don't miss this issue of New York Magazine, 'At Home in Asian America: Who Are We Becoming?'

The New York Magazine cover uses the art by Susan Chen.

If we're looking for a silver lining in the rise of anti-Asian sentiment in the United States and Canada, it has forced our community and  individuals to take a good look at ourselves and our role in the country we call home.

It has pushed politicians to address the sources of hate and to represent the AANHPI communities beyond their constituency. 

Celebrities were compelled to "come out" of their make-believe cocoons of imagined privilege. 

Individuals in business and finance have had to relearn their connections with the AANHPI roots. 

Communicators in journalism and Hollywood stepped out of their self-imposed protective shells to pitch AANHPI-centric story ideas to their editors or studios.

The latest example of the latter to hit the public is New York Magazine’s September 26–October 9, 2022 issue, “At Home in Asian America: Who Are We Becoming?” The issue presents an editorial package examining the Asian American condition as it undergoes a series of profound transformations. 

The cover story “How to Hit Back” by Esther Wang, a collaboration with The Verge, delves into the rise of anti-Asian hate during the pandemic and the righteous, increasingly crime-obsessed campaign to stop it — one that is often in tension with other anti-racist efforts to fight the carceral state, states a press release.

“Like so many Asian Americans, we spent the last two years watching the meaning of Asianness change in the public conversation as well as how Asian Americans themselves have struggled to adapt or have embraced new definitions. Asian Americanness has never felt so public, and with that comes a kind of identity crisis,” said culture features editor Madeline Leung Coleman, who captained the package along with Joy Shan and Ryu Spaeth

The cover art, titled “I Am Not the Kung Flu,” by artist Susan Chen from her 2021 exhibition “I Am Not a Virus,” is part of a series of paintings created over Zoom during the pandemic. The self-portrait was inspired by Chen’s survey of several Asian American community groups focused on what they were buying to protect themselves from violence. The painting, in which Chen wears a mask and a post-vaccine Band-Aid on her arm as visual references to the pandemic-driven rise in fear of anti-Asian violence, displays the most commonly sought after items like pepper spray and tasers, as well as a Feng Shui Bagua mirror, recommended to her by many in the community as a way to deflect bad energy.

“I wanted to connect with Asian Americans across the country and learn more about how they were coping during the pandemic, their lived experiences, if they were impacted by racism, and whether their experience was being reflected in the news or was missing in the news,” said Chen. 

“Everyone I knew who had bought pepper spray or some other item for self-defense had never used it, it was just something they kept in their pocket for peace of mind. I thought it was curious from a psychological place to do a self-portrait with all the items on the table together.”

Also in the package, book critic Andrea Long Chu closely reads the way that novelists use mixed Asian and white characters; Arya Sundaram chronicles the lives of Asian domestic workers working within Asian American homes; news writer Clio Chang profiles poet Cathy Park Hong and discusses how she became liberal America’s go-to Asian American thinker; Mallika Rao uncovers why Asian identity is so closely tied to what they eat; and more.

New York Magazine editor Coleman says: “We wanted to capture a moment in time, without knowing exactly what direction Asian American politics will take us, and acknowledge this moment of evolution.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.