Comedian Margaret Cho certainly knows the pressures of being Asian American working in a groundbreaking television show on network TV.
Her show All American Girl in 1994 was the first Asian American sitcom ever to air on the broadcast networks.
Despite criticism which continues to this day from some Asian Americans that her show wasn’t the great yellow hope some had been waiting for, Cho is excited as many others that Eddie Huang’s memoirs based on his book Fresh Off the Boat has made ABC’s fall line up. It is expected to be titled Far East Orlando.
Cho tweeted the following to both AsAmNews and Huang this evening.
@AsAmNews @MrEddieHuang FOB is much better and I'm so proud to have influenced it even in the smallest way. I'm humbled and joyous. #FOBabc
— Margaret Cho (@margaretcho) May 12, 2014
Recently Cho shared her thoughts about All American Girl with the PBS program, Pioneers of Television.
“I wasn’t thin. I wasn’t white,” Cho said. I think because I wasn’t white, they had to somehow make me conform in other ways that would make me more palatable to an audience.
“When you’re the first person to kind of cross over this racial barrier, then you’re scrutinized for all these other things that have nothing to to do with race, but they have everything to do with race.
Cho’s short lived show ran from 1994 -1995.
You can watch her chapter in the show beginning at 22.23. The segments starts with a conversation with George Takei of Star Trek.