After 'Fresh Off the Boat," Eddie Huang moves on with new book.

Eddie Huang's new book is about his search for identity and his cultural roots.

Reprinted from AsAm News

AFTER his first book, "Fresh Off the Boat,: the inspiration for the hit TV comedy series, life completely changed for Eddie Huang.

The celebrity chef whose memoir Fresh Off the Boat inspired the TV show recently released his latest book, "Double Cup Love, on the Trail of Family, Food and Broken Hearts in China." 

The outspoken Huang talked about the search for his identity in a wide ranging interview on CCTV.

Huang chronicles his journey back to China with members of his family and what he learned about himself and his identity during that trip.

“Race is a social construct,” said Huang to host May Lee on CCTV. “The idea of Chinese is different in China, in Taiwan, in Singapore, New York or LA. The only real definition of it that matters is yours.

“You have to figure out what it means to you. All those things that go into that social construct, which is race. You have to take control of it. Everything that was put in your head by somebody else or society and you allowed it to define you is not real. When you start to break it down, you can finally build yourself back up.”

Huang says he identifies as a Taiwanese, Chinese New Yorker that was touched by “perverted Orlando.” Race in America, he says, still has to get beyond Black and White. He said the controversy over Chris Rock's jokes about Asians on the Oscars shows just how far we still need to come as a society.

“Ninety-nine percent of what Chris Rock did that night was phenomenal. It was masterful,” he said. “But that joke about Asian Americans was terrible. It just shows someone as brilliant as Chris Rock has a blind spot.

He also points out he is very grateful for African/Americans for pushing the civil rights agenda that has helped all people of color.

“Black people laid a lot of the groundwork for civil rights, for us to start to understand what was happening to us because it happened to them. I gravitated toward it. I related to it. Even as a 5-year-old kid, I would watch Black movies. Listen to Black music.

Huang says its his duty to speak up and he’s never been afraid to do so.

“When people call you a chink in school, when people push you down. My parents didn’t come to America for this. I’m not the bottom of the barrel. I refuse to let you think that. I stuck up for myself, my family who I know who get the same treatment.”

"Double Cup Love" is published by Penguin Random House.

Huang also stars in a travel/food show on the Vice channel called Huang's World. Think Anthony Bourdain with Huang's unique perceptive. Some of the most touching episodes is when he visits Taiwan, where his parents came from, and his visit to China, where his parents' families came from. In both episodes he show's what he is talking about in the CCTV interview. 

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Fresh Off the Boat renewed for 2nd season

The Huang family will come back in the second season of Fresh Off the Boat.

FRESH OFF THE BOAT, the landmark TV situation comedy featuring an Asian American immigrant family has been renewed for a second season by ABC.

Despite a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and ratings that hovered in the 1.5-2.0 range throughout the season, fans of FOtB were nervous about the series' future.

The show about a Taiwanese American family adjusting to life in Orlando, Florida had garnered good reviews from critics but to members of the Asian American community, the show was more important as a cultural barometer of how Asian Americans could be accepted in America. Would American audiences accept Asians as relatable characters? Would it open their eyes to the problems immigrants have in this country?

Considering the last show that attempted to break that barrier, Margaret Cho's All American Girl, failed and was 20 years ago, FOtB's success was a good indication of how far this country has come in two decades.

The show was seriously criticized by its creator, Eddie Huang, whose memoirs the show is (very) loosely based as being so white-washed that it was unrecognizable as his life story. 

At least, we'll have another season on which to ponder these questions. We hope the show moves toward's the tone of Huang's original memoir and becomes more edgy without losing the first season's audience. It can become darker without losing any of its laughs. 

First off: The writers need to realize that the Huang family is not the Partridge family. 

Secondly: The fish-out-of-water premise is not enough. The show needs to incorporate an underlying message about how wrong the anti-immigrant view is, That rare category of a having a serious message within a comedic context is not without precedent.

The anti-war classic, M*A*S*H, dealt with death and pathos and it was one of the highest rated shows and critically acclaimed series TV has ever produced. Yet - and yet - it is described as a comedy.

All In The Family starred one of America's biggest bigots, and it still managed to get its anti-bigotry message across with laughter.

It's a balancing act between message and laughs without being heavy handed. It may be more difficult to attain, but it can be done. If done right, it can spell the difference between being ordinary and greatness.

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Hollywood wants to tell white stories with yellow faces

Fresh Off the Boat finds a safe harbor

Eddie Huang: Hollywood wants to tell ‘White stories with yellowface

Eddie Huang's memoirs gave birth to the television family, above,  on Fresh Off The Boat

EDDIE HUANG is no shrinking violet.

In an interview with Bill Maher, he didn't mince words when he told Maher what he thought of the TV show "Fresh Off The Boat," which was based on Huang's memoirs of growing up in Orlando, Florida.

"I don't care," if people watch FOtB. 

He's not happy with the way network television has watered down his take on his own life. No matter what, he told Maher, it doesn't matter if its black, white, Latino or Asian, the Hollywood process comes out with the same story from the same white perspective.

The Hollywood creative process almost mandates that programs want "to tell universal White stories with Yellow faces, Black faces, Brown faces, but they tell the same universal story."

Even before the show debuted in February, Huang had been critical of how his story was being interpreted for mainstream audiences. "I don't even recognize my life," he said.

In a New York Magazine essay, Huang called the Asian American executive producer, Melvin Mar, an Uncle Chan. He wrote:

"From the Chinese Exclusion Act to Yick Wo v. Hopkins to your favorite talking head’s favorite “ching chong” jokes, America never ran out of the shadows to defend the honor of their obedient Chinamen. Despite being the “man’s” preferred lapdog of color, everything Asian-American immigrants have was fought for. We still wake up spotting the man 10 points, walking with our heads down, apologizing for our FOB-y aunts and uncles as if aspiring to wash your shirt or do your taxes were really such an insidiously foreign idea. In a way, I accept that I have to be 10 points better; what I won’t accept are Melvins."

The celebrity chef said his book of the same name, is darker. He reveals that there was domestic abuse in his family. His grandmother had bound feet, he says.

Welcome to Hollywood, Eddie. Hollywood where unique ideas go to die.

Eddie Huang

The show - as presented  on ABC - was a little disappointing but I was willing to let any criticism slide because ... well ... how many shows on TV feature Asian Americans? Despite being an immigrant Taiwanese American family in Orlando, that unique perspective was not adequately explored. In that respect, Huang was right. Many of the stories could have been told in any ordinary family in a television sitcom. The first episode where a classmate called young Eddie a "chink," and the last episode when the family struggled with its identity, were perhaps the best looks at the immigrant factor of the Huang story.

Despite these imperfections and Huang's dissatisfaction, it cannot be denied that FOtB is still a watershed show. Admittedly, the Asian American audience - hell, let's just say, the American audience, deserves better, but until the networks deliver something better, we need to keep FOtB alive while it sharpens its focus. It is good enough for renewal, but it can be so much better if the writers stop trying to cater to a mass audience.

Ominously, despite having decent ratings in its Tuesday, 8 p.m. time slot, considering the strong competition on other channels, ABC hasn't decided whether the breakthrough show is going to be picked up for a second season.

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Fresh Off The Boat finds a safe harbor

Tune in Tuesdays at 8 p.m.

A new American Gothic 

EDDIE HUANG, the 11-year old boy in Fresh Off the Boat, looked familiar: a little bit pudgy, black hair, darker skin, definitely Asian-looking - trying desperately to fit in at a new school and whose goal is to sit at the white kids' cafeteria table. That was me entering middle school at the age of 12.

Personal - sometimes painful - memories easily came flooding back while watching the highly anticipated TV sitcom that centers around TV's newest television family - the Huangs.

But isn't that the point for all the Asian-American hubbub surrounding this new show: to see someone like me/us on the tube beyond playing the second fiddle, the butt of jokes, the servant, the stereotype? 

(NOTE: To all the non-Asians reading this blog, my apologies if I occasionally use personal pronouns, but the original intent of this blog, after all, is directed to my extended family. If you still dig reading it, thanks. I truly appreciate it.)

As young Eddie navigates his way through pre-adolescence and being a stranger in a strange land, (Orlando, Florida) F.O.B. has its funny moments, a few outright laughs and moments of deja vu as an added bonus 

The real Eddie Huang

Don't think this is just an ordinary American TV sitcom with the parents and kids simply replaced with Asian actors. If you're looking for comparisons, its The Wonder Years with Hunan chili peppers. The groundbreaking show, loosely based on restaurateur Eddie Huang's memoirs of the same name, doesn't shy away from race but it doesn't hit you over the head with a sledgehammer about race relations either. 

Being a person of color allows you to pick up on the sometimes subtle nuances provided by the plot. Almost every Asian American, at some point in their lives, remembers how it felt being called the c-word ... hell, it was on national TV for goodness sake ... "chink!" For many of us, that moment is a critical point in how we perceive ourselves and where we fit in this society.

When the c-word is uttered in F.O.B., I gave a silent gasp as the camera briefly focuses on Eddie's face. In that fleeting instant, you can see the anger simmering inside the young boy. (Perhaps, I'm projecting.) Somehow, miraculously, the writers turned it into an incident that leads to a funny confrontation between the parents and the principal.

But the fact that hip-hop loving Eddie had that moment between him and the only African American student in the school as they jostled to avoid being at the bottom of the social pecking order, says so much more than any documentary about race relations on public television.

Constance Wu underplays the mother.

At the same time, to the producers' and writers' credit, they didn't dwell on it. They quickly moved on quickly to other things, often, funny things. The funny moments didn't always have to do with race. The creators use race is just another element that has been missing in most TV shows but one that makes F.O.B. different from your run-of-the-mill half-hour sitcom. 

The other scene that struck a chord was right after the meeting with the principal, the family is strolling across the school playground, when young Eddie comes across his white classmates playing basketball. They stop and look at Eddie. He struts and acknowledges them with a chin-jutting gesture. Yeah. Its all about respect, right? Yeah ... but it came at the expense of the black student.

Constance Wu, who plays Eddie's mother, is a star in the making. Although using a strong accent, it would be easy to slip into the stereotypical tiger-mom, but the writers allows her to soften the character so we see that all that she does is out of love for her family.

In a lesser actress, some of the lines she delivers, or the silent "looks" she gives,would not be as hilarious. She has the best lines of the night and she steals the scene every time she's on the screen. If there's any justice in the world, she would be nominated as best comedic female actor for next season's Emmy's. 

Hudson Yang is perfect as Eddie Huang.

The father, played by Randall Park, fresh from his role in the controversial satirical movie, The Interview, is the likable father trying to do what's best for his family, aware of the uncomfortable situation he put them in by uprooting them to from diverse Washington D.C. to mostly-white Orlando. His unrelenting belief in the American Dream and America as the Land of Opportunity makes him a bridge that many non-Asians could relate to and admire.

Bottom line, the Huang family is extremely likable, something that will go a long way in determining the show's longevity if we are asking America to invite them into their living rooms every week. The non-Asian writers walk a tightrope between the real Eddie Huang's story and the all-too easy tilt towards racial stereotypes. Let's hope they can maintain that balance. 

What the show does best (mind you, I've only seen two episodes) is allow viewers to peek into a world and perception of that world from an Asian immigrant's point of view. No other TV show does that.

Let's hope that it does that for several more seasons. I'd love to see young Eddie turn into a teenager with all the angst that period between childhood and adulthood brings to it. Overall, the show works. The situation and environment of the show is ripe with possibilities - some funny, some poignant. 

One other inside joke that may bypass non-Asian viewers, F.O.B., long a derogatory term for newcomers, is on the ABC network, which in the Chinese-American community, stands for American Born Chinese, also a derogatory term used against Chinese Americans.

I know what I'll be recording Tuesday nights. Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Oh, I can't take credit for that last line.

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Anxiety over 'Fresh Off the Boat' TV sitcom eases up

Critics like what they see; premiere on Feb. 4

The cast of Fresh Off The Boat is being praised for its portrayals of an immigrant family adjusting to America.

THE EARLY REVIEWS are in for the ground-breaking sitcom Fresh Off The Boat and those of us who were worried about this make-or-break series for Asian Americans can breathe a little easier.

The "Daily Variety," the entertainment industry's newspaper almost gushed. TV columnist Brian Lowry writes: 

"The series mixes that kind of cultural specificity with universal themes, and in that sense is far more committed to its premise than, say, 'Black-ish,' where race regularly disappears as an issue. By contrast, one of the funniest bits in 'Fresh Off the Boat' comes in a later episode when Eddie brings home a terrific report card, and his mother marches into the principal’s office, complaining that his classes must be too easy.

Lowry does acknowledge the lack of diversity on American television and credits ABC for its "diversity push" amongst its situation comedies. He calls FOB the network's best sitcom this season.

The show is apparently funny on many levels. "That's the kind of expanded reach that Fresh Off the Boat (like Black-ish and The Goldbergs) has and needs," writes Tim Goodman of the "Hollywood Reporter." 

"This is a comedy first and foremost," Goodman says. "The laughs can't always come from the same source." In other words, race is just one source of jokes, there's school and all the situations about fitting in, assimilation and fresh takes on American culture that hopefully will find the audience laughing along with the  writers and producers.

Fresh Off The Boat is loosely based on the book of the same name written by Eddie Huang and is from the viewpoint of his 11-year-old self. Hudson Yang, who plays Eddie's character, Constance Wu, the mother, and Randall Park, who plays the father, are getting singled out for their portrayals.  

If the reviews are correct, don't get turned off by the first episode, which apparently relies on the same, old tired Asian stereotypes. By airing the second episode the same evening, viewers can reportedly still see the stereotypes but they can also see an evolution in the characters.

Hudson Yang, right, as Fresh Off the Boat's hip-hop loving Eddie Huang. 

That's the beauty of a series, characters can get more rounded and more complex beyond our first impressions. Let's hope ABC gives FOB more of a chance to achieve this than it did for the short-lived Selfie.

Despite their individual quirks, the Huang family is likable, which important if you want the American audience to commit itself to a half-hour every week. There has to be a reason to come back. TV viewers can hopefully find a bit of their own families in the Huangs' immigrant experience. The awkwardness of trying to fit in is a universal experience. Despite the mother's accent and the food that they eat, audience should see the Huangs as just another American family. We're all a little bit weird, unique, and similar at the same time, eh?

Not all the reviews were good but almost all were unanimous in praise of the cast.

FOB must seek that delicate balance between universality and what makes the show unique, which is the Asian American angle. America has not seen this side of the Asian American experience beside a few paragraphs in their history books about working on railroads and WW II.

The show premieres its first two episodes on Wednesday, Feb. 4 at 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. before moving to its regular Tuesday evening slot. 

Come back to this blog a day or two after the show when I'll be giving my two cents.

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High expectations for Fresh Off The Boat television sitcom

Premiere is on Feb. 4

Eddie Huang's television family.

I WISH I could just sit back and watch Fresh Off The Boat, the sitcom featuring an Asian American family, without all the hoopla about the show's social and cultural significance. But watching the show without expectations is impossible now.

I want it to succeed so much. I want America to view the show and welcome the Huang's into their living rooms like I use to do with the Partridges, the Cunninghams, the Bunkers, the Keatons, the Cleavers, and of course, the Ricardos.

But what if it fails? What if FOB is a dud? What if it doesn't live up to the hype? What if its - GASP - not funny?

If FOB doesn't succeed - coming on the heels of the cancellation of Selfie starring John Cho - that might mean the death knell to any future attempt to put on a show centered around Asian characters. When Margaret Cho's All-American Girl ingloriously ended, it took the networks 20 years before one of them decided to take a chance with FOB.

FOB, the story of a Taiwanese American family based on the autobiography of restauranteur Eddie Huang, has already stumbled out of the gate.

First off, Fresh Off The Boat, is a derogatory term directed at new immigrants. I guess by making FOB so common, it is supposed to take the sting away from the term, much in the way African Americans turned around the use of Black. Still, couldn't the producers come up with a better title?

Next, Huang wrote an article for New York Magazine expressing his disappointment in the producers who, he said, are trying to make the show less edgy to make it more palatable to the mass market. Here's an excerpt:

“Just say the line,” said Melvin, our executive producer. 

“Did you read the book?” I asked. “If you can find any crumb of a complete thought in the book that remotely infers ‘America is great,’ I’ll read the line. 

“Eddie, we need it for the episode. It’s a big moment! You have a black kid and a Chinese kid breaking bread over a Jewish hip-hop concert. Where else could this happen? America IS great!”

A week before the show's premiere, the production's social media contractors tweeted this:

Oops!

Huang was furious. He tweeted, "maybe people are just fucking morons. you have to be a mouth breathing psycho to make that graphic."

The producers were embarrassed and apologetic. The social media promoters were given a serious dressing down for their ignorance and lack of sensitivity, according to Jeff Yang, "Wall St. Journal" blogger and father of Hudson Yang, who portrays Eddie Huang, the series' main character.

With great trepidation, I await the premiere of Fresh Off The Boat. There is lot more at stake here than just another new situation comedy: The Huang's could become the next great American sitcom family, giving the TV audience a view of Asian Americans that go beyond the old stereotypes, or ... it could be the last time a television show features Asian American characters as its main protagonists. 

If all that piques your interest, tune in on ABC on Wednesday evening's two episode premiere at 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. ABC hopes to get some of the audience of their hit Modern Family, which is squeezed between the two FOB episodes. Let's hope it works.

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