![]() Get Simu’s Look: Paskho Pants VEJA x Rick Owens Sneakers. And those are more core to Shang-Chi’s character than his ability to punch people.” “I am that person that’s always felt like he wasn’t enough. “I am that person that struggled with my identity my whole life,” says Liu. Three years after the late Chadwick Boseman and Black Panther gave the MCU its first Black-led film, a different “other” now gets to be the hero. (The first syllable rhymes with “Kung,” not “Kang.”) An Asian American is about to save the world-and look jacked doing it. And never mind that the original character himself is a study in Asian representation done wrong, or that the early years of the MCU were straight from the whitewashing playbook, or that you (and nearly every Marvel YouTuber) have been pronouncing his name wrong for months. But who doesn’t want to be an Avenger, right? Yet for all the diversity in the epic final battle of Avengers: Endgame, there was but one Asian, Wong, Doctor Strange’s . . . sidekick. ![]() Not everyone wants to be Minari’s Jacob Yi, the Korean American farmer who moves his family cross-country to Arkansas, even though the film won a Golden Globe. Men's Healthīut an Asian Marvel superhero signifies something else, because of Marvel’s outsize cultural imprint and because superheroes have always represented ideals. Just be unapologetically you you’re not less than anybody else.’ ”Īccess exclusive muscle-building workouts and weight loss diets with our digital membership program. “They’re missing people to tell them, ‘It’s okay to be who you are-you belong. “There is something missing in Asian America,” says Liu, who is Chinese Canadian. It’s been more than two decades since a New Jersey neighbor, angry at my mom, told her to “go back to where you came from.” I’ve never spoken of it until now, because I believed that somehow my family was at fault-and because I never understood that I could speak about it. As the son of a Chinese mother and an Indianįather, I understand this intimately. It is not a new feeling for many Asian Americans, but it is a new discussion, one with new hope. It comes in the midst of a moment for Asian Americans, who’ve grown more and more conscious of (and vocal about) the racism and lack of representation that have long defined their American experience. In September, the 32-year-old will star as the titular character in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, the first Marvel Cinematic Universe film with an Asian lead. Liu is clad in a slightly baggy Toronto Raptors T-shirt that hides a chiseled physique, and he’s sipping boba tea, a decidedly Asian American blend of green or black tea, milk, and tapioca pearls. We’re speaking about it right now in a Zoom interview while he’s sitting in his Los Angeles hotel room. This is what it’s like to be “other”-and it sucks. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play And when none of that solves a problem that should never exist, you consider changing other things, like your name. ![]() So that damn reflection? Each day, you reject it more, bartering your identity away to “fit in,” whether that means changing your look or changing your accent or hating your lunch or maybe hating your mom, too. You? You’re forever sidekick, so unimportant and invisible that the playground dash to the fence starts before you’ve finished tying your shoes to join in. They’re watching the same TV shows, playing the same video games, in awe of the same superheroes as you-except the stars look like them, so heroism in everything from freeze tag to cops and robbers is their birthright. Once the thought penetrates your head, it’s hard to shake. You start to believe that the infinite possibilities you see onscreen aren’t for you. And if you never see anyone who looks like you reflected back on those screens, you just might question how you fit into that world. Yet if you watch enough screens, whether phones or laptops or TVs, at some point you start to believe those screens reflect the world. It shouldn’t be that way, especially not for a kid. Get Simu’s Look: WILL-V Pants VEJA x Rick Owens Montblanc Watch. ![]()
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