The More You Known: SuChin Pak — Reclaiming the Asian American narrative with chicken salad
It can be very hard to feel at home when you look different from everyone around you. As an Asian American growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, I’ve felt my fair share of this sense of alienation. Between uninvited nicknames and thoughtless questions, younger me was faced with frequent reminders of my “Asian-ness.” Younger Stephanie felt pressure to hide it.
A lot of those masks turned into habits which I still catch myself occasionally reverting to. Especially given recent hate crimes towards Asians, I’ve found myself struggling with my racial identity. How can we feel welcome where we don’t feel safe? How do we own our identities when our identities are misunderstood?
SuChin Pak is also wrestling with these questions and experiences. Currently the co-host of the popular Add to Cart podcast, SuChin continues to reclaim the Asian American narrative with her actions and thoughts. Since starting her career at 16 and later becoming the first Asian American news correspondent on MTV, SuChin has been a champion in growing Asian representation in American media. She recently helped to relaunch MTV Books with the heartwarming and witty My Life: Growing Up Asian in America. This collection of 30 thought pieces written by Asian Americans, including SuChin herself, shines a light on what it means to be an Asian American in the 21st century.
Ross Martin, Known President and SuChin’s former MTV colleague, sat down with his longtime friend to chat about some of the many ways SuChin has broken, and continues to break, the glass ceilings in American media. Below are excerpts from the most recent episode of The More You Known, during which SuChin discussed how she navigates through the dynamic experience of being Asian American today.
The Beginnings of Add to Cart
I like to come in at the very end of a trend when everybody has done it. I’m like, “Let me get in on it at the tail end and make sure that I learn from everyone else’s mistakes,” and I can also quietly slip out ’cause nobody will even notice I entered the room. So when I was approached to do a podcast I was like, “Well listen, I don’t want to sit every week and talk about the news. I don’t want to talk about heavy shit. I don’t want to talk about racism. I don’t want to talk about poverty. I don’t want to talk about mental health. I want to talk about all the stuff I’m buying online. I want to talk about lip palettes. I want to talk about books.” These little things bring me so much joy in this time that we have to hold onto whatever we can.
We started recording before the pandemic — before the politics continued to get crazy and wackier, before Black lives, before the violence in the Asian community, before this week [when the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting took place].
I couldn’t sit down every week and talk about the shit I buy and not talk about why I haven’t been out of bed in four weeks, or why I can’t seem to drop my kids off without bursting into tears. Or why I can’t concentrate on work because I’m constantly calling and texting my mom to see that she’s not leaving her house and she’s not going on her walks. So in essence, the podcast is about the things we buy, but it’s really about what it says about who we are. It’s like any conversation you have with your best friend; You can talk about hair gel and then two seconds later talk about how your husband is driving you absolutely insane as you all work from home.
On the “Asian-ness” of American foods
As an Asian person living in a very predominantly white town, I go to the deli almost every day and I order my lunch. And there are many things on this menu, but the only thing I want is a Chinese chicken salad. I want my wonton strips. I want my cabbage. I want sesame dressing. And I had been ordering this every day. It’s the first thing I look forward to. I drive over there, I eat in my car, I listen to podcasts. It’s my self-care hour, you know?
And one day I was in there and looked around and was like, “I’m the only Asian person in here ordering the Chinese chicken salad every day”. And I was like, “Oh no. Not on my watch.” And so I started to go in there and order it in different ways. I was like, “Do you have that salad with the cabbage and a sesame dressing?” So my movement is, no more Chinese chicken salad. If you go to Korea, they will not say we are known for our Asian chicken salad. It does not exist outside of this country, so we don’t need to call it that. We can call it sesame chicken salad.
On sharing unheard stories
[My Life: Growing Up Asian in America] is 30 voices including myself. And everybody was tasked to answer the question, “What does it mean to be Asian in America?” And you could drop the needle on a memory that you had as a kid that transformed your life. You could talk about what it means to be Asian in America and from all walks of life — from different geographical locations and ages. We have Obama’s speech writer in here, we have the ex-CEO of Reddit, we have artists and poets and screenwriters. Each story is more different than the next. I mean, there’s poetry, there are drawings. It’s fantastic. And this was put together so quickly — in about a year.
On the recent violence against Asian Americans
I want to acknowledge that there are communities of color that have this as the only experience they have of moving in public spaces in this country. And in some ways, because of my “closeness to whiteness” so to speak, I’ve been allowed to think about this so late in my life. I moved my parents closer. They’re now living in Santa Barbara because of it. They were living in the Bay Area, and I couldn’t do it. During the pandemic when I couldn’t see them, it was so difficult and they were so isolated.
Most of us have parents who don’t speak English or engage in news. My parents didn’t even know this was happening until I told them. They thought I was overreacting when I said, “You cannot leave the house right now.” I think on the podcast around this time, I was just crying my way through this.
The thing that keeps me up at night is that something will happen on their walk and they’ll be alone. And no one will call the ambulance, because my mother doesn’t know how to do that. And even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to express what had happened to the person on the phone. So if anyone happens to see an Asian elder in trouble, will you please sit with them and wait until help comes? I mean, how do you process that kind of fear and that loss of power? I don’t know. It’s still a processing moment.
I also find that in weird little ways when I’m out with my mother and I feel a vibe shift, I will speak English a little louder and very clearly so that people know I am American. I catch myself doing that in these moments. When you don’t feel safe, it permeates every aspect of your life. In talking about mental health, I mean, I’m probably not doing too great mentally. I think I’m pretty resilient in general, but it’s hard to sort of figure out how I find grounding in this. How do I find safety in this? How do I feel safe with my children?
On feeling discriminated against
[While we were all watching SuChin confidently address America on MTV, she was quietly struggling with her identity behind the scenes, when some of her colleagues would comment on her appearance being “too Asian.”]
This was a long time ago. And when you are that young, you compartmentalize your memories and emotions for a reason. It’s because you just don’t even have the brain to process it. We didn’t have the language. I couldn’t articulate myself to explain what this was. Which is why for so many years I felt like a coward.
Now I’m 46, and having been through these past few years, I can articulate what had happened and those memories have come flooding back. It’s a surprise to me that it still sits there. It’s a surprise to me that I’m processing it for the first time now with a brain that can process what had happened to me at the time.
So what was it like then? It wasn’t fun. I was one version of myself in front of the camera, and then the other version — my personal life — was a complete wreck. And I think that that’s something a lot of us can relate to. If you’ve ever been in a situation where it feels that stressful or that out of body, when you’re that young and unable to process it, you put it away. And I think that’s perfectly fine. I don’t believe that we should all face trauma in the moment that it’s happening. I think that that’s a crazy expectation that we have bought into a lot. These instagram inspiration quotes, “Face your demons”, sometimes are not the best way through it.
On progressive change
This book is heartbreaking, but at the end you’ll feel really, really good about where we’re headed. Listen, this is like trial by fire. This is what’s happening now. But from this, forged in this sort of moment of terribleness, I think is a conversation and a type of understanding that could only be forged through such difficulty. And I think that we’re all rising to the occasion.
