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I’m Jeff Yang not Jeff Chang! The everyday horror of having to say, ‘sorry, wrong Asian’ | Jeff Yang
I asked Asian Americans to share their funny-not-funny stories of being mistaken for other people
Recently, standup queen Ali Wong announced her separation from her husband of eight years, Justin Hakuta. Sad news for the couple, who have two young daughters. And sad news for uninvolved bystander Randall Park, who, by virtue of having co-starred with Wong in the breakout Netflix romcom Always Be My Maybe, found his face splashed across the internet in breaking-news posts by Parade magazine and MSN – both of which used photos of Park in place of Hakuta.
I don’t know what it was like for him on the day the story of Wong’s divorce hit the headlines. I imagine him driving home from a long day of being hilarious on TV, when all of a sudden his phone begins buzzing like a bag of angry hornets. He pulls over and looks at his messages. They’re from concerned friends and relatives, asking what he had to do with the breakup of his close friend and co-star’s marriage. He’s not on Twitter, so he messages back in panic asking for context. And then the phone rings, and it’s his wife, and honey, there’s some ’splainin to do …
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