Press Interview with Director Eugene Yi of The A List: 15 Stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (0:02): Welcome to the Color Success Podcast. I'm your host, Doctor Stephanie J. Wong. Many of us are feeling a wide range of emotions, sadness, anger, fear, sometimes hopelessness, and helplessness.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (0:16): This season, we will be exploring all the feelings and ways to empower each other to take action. So let's go. Game on.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (0:29): Today, I sit down with Eugene Yi and he is a filmmaker whose directing work includes The Rose: Come Back To Me. We are talking about The A List: 15 stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas. It is a tapestry of personal vignettes from across the Asian American, native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities in America. The film captures lived experiences from high profile celebrities like Sandra Oh to unsung heroes like Madelyn Yu, a retired nurse in New Jersey. These intimate first person accounts invite viewers to question umbrella terms like Asian American and AAPI and instead draw focus to the individuals and the communities themselves.

Eugene Yi (1:14): Stephanie, your whole set is so beautiful. I'm just so embarrassed to be here with, like, default blur number three on Zoom. 

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (1:22): No. I am actually, I'm a psychologist, so it actually worked out perfectly when I do virtual sessions.

Eugene Yee (1:30): Oh my goodness. That's amazing.  I wanna interview you.

Doctor Stephanie J. Wong (1:36): I would love to have lunch with you. We could totally nerd out on the Rose and K pop. But anyways, this is about you. 

Doctor Stephanie J. Wong (1:46): I'm Dr. Stephanie J. Wong, Color Success Podcast. And there's so much to talk about with your new documentary, The A List. I was blown away. I watched the entire thing on our road trip to Mendocino, and obviously there's a lot of better known folks in the media, as well as some unsung heroes. So can you tell me a little bit about how you selected 15?

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (2:11): Because that must have been really, really hard.

Eugene Yi (2:13): Oh, yeah. No, our final list ended up with over 500 people on them. And so narrowing it down was not easy. What I'm grateful for is obviously the trust of the producers who reached out to me to work on the project. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, whose photographs, obviously, are so beautiful and grace the project in so many ways, as well as Chad Thompson and the folks at HBO, as well as Jada Yuan, who was our main interviewer.

Eugene Yi (2:46): And what I appreciate about having worked with her especially is I can have my ideas about who's important, but if there's more than one of us in a room, we're gonna agree, we're gonna disagree, we're gonna chop it up, we're gonna come to different conclusions about things, and I just love that collaboration that we had as well as with the other folks who are part of our crew as well. So with any list, you're gonna end up leaving someone out is the thing. And we kinda had to recognize that, especially when you have this term, API, AANHPI, that ultimately, what, it's like half or two thirds of the world.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (3:25): I'm wearing my Asians are Strong t-shirt.

Eugene Yi (3:27): Oh, can I see that? Oh, okay.

Doctor Stephanie J. Wong (3:28): It's like Asians are Strong. 

Eugene Yi (3:33): I'll have to look that up. Because I have the Very Asian sweater that the Very Asian Foundation put out a while ago, so I love that kind of merch. So we had to recognize not only that a list would be incomplete, but also the ways that past lists have been incomplete and what kind of omissions you saw there. Because so often, I think especially in an American context, you're often leaving out South Asians, We're not talking about them enough, or Pacific Islanders maybe don't get mentioned, or if they do get mentioned, they're just giving lip service. So we got very model minority about it and got very into the numbers.

Eugene Yi (4:18): So four East Asians, four Southeast Asians, four South Asians, two Pacific Islanders, and then one kind of like wild card spot for whoever might might sort of emerge in the process. And so starting with that, we it gave us a rubric to kind of be like, okay. This is at least the way we will recognize past erasures and omissions while recognizing the limitations of the project that we have going forward. So that's how it all started up.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (4:43): Absolutely. One of my favorites actually was Schuyler Bailar. I work with transgender patients and so it was just really helpful. When the documentary comes out, I'd like to show them at least that interview because I think it'll really empower people to live more authentically. I mean, fortunately it worked out in terms of Skyler's transition and talking about the process with his family and obviously Harvard was supportive. However, there's just so much that kind of goes into people even thinking about that transition or the safety piece.

Eugene Yi (5:25): Absolutely.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (5:26): And just the backlash that they may receive from their family and etcetera. I mean, I'm preaching to the choir, but you know, this is a mental health podcast. So you did weave in those mental health aspects in a very subtle way. So how did you approach kind of telling some of the more difficult aspects of fighting for rights and representation? And I mean, Sandra Oh was like, it's great to have conflict actually, because that means you're sitting in the room and talking about things, right?

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (6:00): But it it's hard to do that.

Eugene Yi (6:03): It's so hard. And I'm so glad you mentioned Schuyler who, like everybody else, deserves their own full film. And there's so much, particularly from a mental health perspective, that Skyler went into so beautifully in our interview with him and in interviews that he has done in other spaces as well. So I I definitely encourage any listeners and viewers to to seek those out because he's such an amazing spokesperson. I give a lot of credit to our EP at HBO, Tina Nguyen, who suggested Schuyler as as as someone to include because Schuyler has been in a has really just sort of given so much richness and depth to the group Tableau that we've created.

Eugene Yi (6:45): But, I mean, there's so much that's fundamental to life as an AAPI person that reflects on loss, like, or on displacement or on colonization driven by militarization, like, these sources of trauma that we're all working through, oftentimes intergenerationally received in some way or another. And to bring it back to Skyler, that sort of so what I love about Skyler's story is that you can kind of see the ways that intergenerational trauma in the form of his conversation with his grandmother might not work out the way you think it does.

Eugene Yi (7:19): I'll say that without spoiling too much. But to that end, when I see the film, I see 15 approaches to dealing with that. 15 approaches of dealing with intergenerational trauma, loss displacement, connection, solidarity, family. And I think my hope is that any viewer will watch the film and find the resonances that really hit them and see how these are ways to connect with each other that can be coping mechanisms, that can be strategies to build community and to find ways to work through a lot of the the struggles that we're all dealing with, that I'm certainly dealing with, that we all sort of carry with us from day to day.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (7:58): Well, as a Chinese American female, speaking of Schuyler, really talking about a difference that was felt being perceived as a Asian female versus an Asian male and just kind of the erasure of visibility there to some extent. It's so dynamic, right? And so, you know, thinking about community engagement, it's a call to action. So how do you think people can really get involved? Because some people will may watch and be like, well, I'm not a celebrity or I'm not an activist, but I think at the ground level we really do need to build that community.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (8:39): So what is maybe some call to action that you can think of?

Eugene Yi (8:44): Oh, my goodness. I mean, again, it's like 15 calls to action.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (8:49): Yes, yes. I mean, you can take one from each, definitely. But I guess like the general day to day life, right? Where we're, you know, people watch it, feel inspired, and also there's a lot going on in the world. Let's just say that.

Eugene Yi (9:04): There is a lot going on in the world and there's a lot going on in The United States. We live in a time right now where our existences are under threat, where people are disappearing. And and I don't want to not put a fine point on it. Like, this is not the America that I think I had imagined the film would be coming out in. I mean, some of our last interviews were during the election cycle, and, you know, there was cautious optimism about how things would work out.

Eugene Yi (9:35): And when that proved not to be the case, you can never predict what world the film will come out in. But in this world, I think, for those who have the privilege to stand up and tell their stories, I think it's just so much more important than ever to do that because our visibility, our existence is itself a political act. And that doesn't mean you have to be on the front lines of a protest. There are many, many different ways that you can make your presence felt. But if people can feel if people watch this film and feel inspired and want to do something, I mean, I would start off by saying, one, you're already doing something by existing and by moving through this world, in this body, in this space, in a country that doesn't necessarily create a space that welcomes us.

Eugene Yi (10:20): But secondly, to find those sources of connection solidarity, like, that you might find around you. Because I think for the film, what we were hoping was that the film would not just be a reflection of a community or an attempt at a reflection of a community, but a reflection of an attempt at community building even. And I'll say for having gone through the process of making this film, I have learned so much more about so many of the people that we share this umbrella term with. And if we're gonna make this umbrella term work for us, like, we all can afford to do a little bit more learning is what I feel. And especially at a time now when you know, we don't know what the world's gonna be like in a year or two.

Eugene Yi (11:04): But with the idea of solidarity and connection at the root of an AAPI existence, I mean, I think that's something I find tremendously inspiring. Like, we don't exist outside of the context of solidarity. And to build on that, I think, is something that I hope people will take away.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (11:18): That was a mic drop, but I I thank you so much because our existence even on this call just shows how powerful it is to meet people I I never thought I would meet as a psychologist working in the community and so forth. You know, I really applaud you and your team for doing this and all the people that were brave enough to speak about their experience because I think there's so many Asian Americans or whatever umbrella term you wanna use that have made significant contributions to The US and to kind of highlight that.

Eugene Yi (11:53): No, I appreciate everything you do. I mean, particularly working in the field of mental health as an AAPI person, it's like there's a lot there. A lot. Yes. And to take that on is a tremendous task and speaks to just your bravery and your courage too.

Eugene Yi (12:11): So I just appreciate everything that you do as well.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (12:14): Well, thank you so much for the time and I'm sure we'll follow-up and talk a lot more about things. Thank you so much for speaking with me today.

Eugene Yi (12:26): No, thank you so much for your interest and for having us on. Really appreciate it.

Dr. Stephanie J. Wong (12:30): Thank you for listening. We would love for you to subscribe to the podcast and join our community on all our socials at colorsuccesspodcast.com. Looking forward to you checking out my memoir, Cancel the Filter, Realities of a Psychologist, Podcaster, and Working Mother of Color on Amazon and wherever books are sold. I'd love to hear your cancel the filter moments.