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Angry Little Asian Girl

An interview with cartoonist Lela Lee

By Felicia Wu

Watch out! She's tiny, she's angry and she isn't afraid to lash out that anger through piercing tirades. "I was born here you stupid ****! Don't you know anything about immigration? Read some real history you stupid ignoramus!!!" She's Kim, the angry little Asian girl created by Lela Lee.

Lee created Kim during her sophomore year at UC Berkeley after watching Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Lee based Kim on her experiences as an Asian American female. However, Lee never showed anybody the comic because she was embarrassed by the intense anger it portrayed.

Finally, four years later in 1997, she decided to send it to Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, and the clips of her cartoon were seen and reviewed by the LA Times and the LA Weekly. After getting great reviews on the cartoon, Lee, with encouragement from her friends, decided to start selling T-shirts of the Angry Little Asian Girl. The T-shirts were popular and sold out.

Lee has since started her own website www.angrylittleasiangirl.com to continue selling her shirts (she has also branched out to mugs) and showcase her cartoons. Youth Radio got a chance to interview this open-speaking woman about her experiences growing up as a child and what Angry Little Asian Girl represents for her.

Youth Radio: How long have you been drawing?

Lela Lee: I started Angry Little Asian Girl in 1994, that was my sophomore year in college. And then it sat in my drawer for about four years, and then I took it out and I started reworking it.

YR: I can imagine that putting out a comic book might face some controversy. Some people's reactions might be "Oh, these comics are just about girls complaining about life." Have you gotten any comments such as these? If so, how did you respond to that?

LL: Yeah I have actually gotten a few emails saying that the comic strip is just about little spoiled girls complaining about the freedoms of their life, but then I also get emails from people saying that they really can relate to it, so I pretty much don't really get affected by the negative comments.

YR: What kind of positive feedback have you gotten?

LL: I get a lot of positive feedback from people…actually a lot of people say that they know an angry little Asian girl or that they themselves are an angry little Asian girl and that this really speaks to them and it's exactly how they're feeling.

YR: Has making this comic strip changed you in any way?

LL: It has, it's made me a cartoonist which I never thought I would be!

YR: Where do you get your ideas from?

LL: Sometimes I make them up and sometimes they are based on experiences I've had. A lot of my childhood experiences are in this comic strip, but sometimes the environment is not exactly the same so I'll make up certain characters for the angry little Asian girl to interact with or I'll make up an event - but the sentiment of the experience is the same.

YR: For people out there who aren't aware of female Asian stereotypes, can you give a description of what that is?

LL: The female Asian stereotype is the image of the little geisha -- really sweet, really diminutive, kind of giggles with her hand over her mouth, and is very discreet. When I was growing up my mom really wanted me to be very ladylike and I didn't know what that meant because she herself was not really ladylike. So I thought that was really bizarre that she was actually trying to make me abide by this ideal when in fact I didn't feel like she was that ideal. She's a really strong woman and she was running the business, she was running the family, and she was doing all this stuff and then when it came time for her to teach me etiquette, it just didn't make any sense… she herself didn't abide by any of these things, so I just thought that it was really strange.

YR: How do you feel about how Asian women are portrayed in the media?

LL: I mean, it could be more [3] dimensional, but I think it's definitely getting better 'cause there's an awareness about it. I think that writers are pretty open-minded to having different characters and that they want to actually do different things, but I think that networks are really scared about what the viewership would say and that the viewership might not tune in because it's offensive or because they just wanna see reflections of the Midwest on TV. But I think the color scheme of the viewership is really different from what the networks might think it is. So, I think it's going in a positive direction but I think it's progressing at a slower pace than [I would have] liked.

YR: Do you think your comics fit in with the changing or supporting of the Asian portrayals that are in the media?

LL: Well I don't know if I'm supporting it. I just didn't feel like there was anything really out there for an Asian girl. I didn't consciously really try to make it this way, it just so happened that I was really sick of my mother telling me that I needed to be this ideal image of an Asian woman. Then society at large, aside from just my mother, made assumptions about what a girl should be, especially if you're Asian. I just had an accumulated fury inside of myself from living and I think that the cartoon came out from that… I did it just 'cause it's a real - hopefully it's a real - and honest character that people look to as a hope of better images to come.

YR: You've also included your comic to include non-Asians. Why did you decide to do this?

LL: I did it because I was getting approached by a lot of different production companies for television and the main thing they had actually said in meetings was that the Asian ethnicity was actually a really touchy thing. So I just thought, "Okay well, I'll expand it because:

A. I wanted to see a future for it and hopefully get longevity out of it, and then

B. because she [the angry little Asian girl] was just living in this one universe with herself and her parents, and I thought, "Well when I was growing up, I did actually have friends of different backgrounds" and so I thought it would be interesting to actually expand it and have it include them. And then because

C. when I was going out selling shirts on the streets a lot of non Asians would come and say, "Oh my gosh I would totally wear that shirt - but I can't because I'm not Asian." So I expanded it for those reasons.

YR: What are the biggest issues or concerns among Asian Americans today that you feel need to be voiced to society?

LL: Probably racism. Racism I think is really subtle and it creeps up in places that can be kind of…sometimes it's really blatant, and sometimes it's really subtle, and sometimes you're not sure if that was a slight or not and you're not sure if it's because it's you or because it's your color or it's because of your gender. Any kind of "ism," -- racism or sexism -- is something that I think Asian women have to deal with. And for Asian Americans I think it's just about being vocal 'cause I know that voting is a real issue among Asian Americans…I think Asian Americans are actually getting better about it, but I think that their parents don't go out to vote and they don't vocalize what their needs are and so being vocal about the issues that affect us is I think something that needs to be worked on.

YR: Did you experience a lot of racism growing up?

LL: Yeah. I did among my other classmates. I got teased a lot, and my parents got it as well because they ran a business and sometimes I could actually hear the interactions. It was totally there.

— Felicia Wu is a 17-year-old senior at Albany High School in California.