An invaluable spotlight.

This is far from a flashy podcast, but may end up one of the most significant. Unlike Asian Enough?, another really good show that focuses on celebrity Asians discussing identity conflicts, Dear Asian Americans is very different - it captures the mundane but very, very different lives of everyday Asian Americans from very different walks of life. There are undercurrent themes in almost all of these interviews that are nearly universal, but the way they play out among people with varied socioeconomic backgrounds and different external conflicts couldn’t be more different.

In this way, I think Dear Asian Americans is unassumingly one of the most important shows for Asian Americans on the air right now - maybe ever. Yes, it’s a celebration of how far we’ve come and a recognition of how much we have left to achieve, but it’s much more than that. These lives are memorialized for historical purposes, but on a personal level, Jerry starts off the show explaining he’s making this series for his child. Recognizing you can’t be what you can’t see, he wants to shed a light on what careers and dreams are not only possible, but are already happening. As my wife and I prepare to welcome our baby daughter into the world and I think about the life she might or might not lead as an Asian-American in the Midwest, I’m grateful this show exists. You can’t be what you can’t see, but at least this way she’ll grow up knowing there’s a world of possibilities that many Asian-Americans in this part of the States may never see, but is certainly real, and most importantly, hers for the living.