As she looked out onto the crowd of students, faculty and staff under the bright magenta lights, Karen Chee greeted the audience with a smile and a wave as she hopped on stage. After warming up the room with a few jokes, she jumped into a 30-minute set centered around her experiences as an Asian American woman.
The comedian and writer, who does stand-up in New York and writes for NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, visited the University of Maryland on Friday. She performed and discussed how Asian American studies have shaped her career with Terry Park, a lecturer at this university and her former senior thesis advisor.
Chee’s set featured a variety of anecdotes from her experiences in therapy and birth control to her relationships with her parents and grandparents. She frequently poked fun at the various microaggressions pointed at her and her family, like white people telling Chee how good her English is.
She also touched on the new wave of microaggressions attached to the recent coronavirus outbreak. She even experienced those microaggressions right before the event. On her way down to this university by train, she coughed into her shirt just as cough etiquette calls for — when she looked up, the people next to her had moved.
Photo by Gabrielle Lewis
Chee loves to make fun of microaggressions in her comedy because she finds them to be hilarious. Her lighthearted treatment of the subject helped remove some of the gravity from the situation and show how ridiculous they are afterward.
“I think everyone’s identity affects their comedy or whatever they creatively outfit,” Chee said. “I get a lot of microaggressions, and that’s very normal for me, so I’m gonna make jokes about that.”
Chee’s visit, sponsored by the Asian American Studies (AAST) program and Office of Multicultural Community Advocacy, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the founding of Asian American Studies. Chee decided to do the event because she wanted to be a part of this school’s AAST program in some way.
“Any time there is an established Asian American Studies Program, or even like a library or anything, even minor, I’m very excited to be a part of that,” Chee said. Having a background in Asian American Studies has allowed Chee to be “more confident about pursuing opportunities.” Comedy continues to be a white male-dominated space, she said, but the newer voices entering that space are more diverse.
“I feel a lot less nervous about being an Asian American person taking up space in white spaces,” Chee said. “I have a set of tools to sort of, if I emotionally get very nervous about stuff … I can think like, ‘No, you deserve to be here. Your voice is just as important.’”
Photo by Gabrielle Lewis
Chee’s set segued into a sit-down chat between Park and her, where they covered how Chee got into comedy, her experience as an Asian American woman on Seth Meyers’ show, and Asian American studies’ role in her career.
Before coming to this university, Park previously taught at Harvard University where he was the “main Asian-Americanist” in the school’s history and literature program. He was paired up with Chee, he said, who was doing work in Asian American history and literature. Chee wrote her thesis on H. T. Tsiang, a Chinese-American author from the early 20th century, who wrote The Hanging in Union Square.
Tsiang, who is the first known Asian American satirist, self-published his novel in 1932. Learning about him showed Chee that Asian American comedy has been in the U.S. for a long time and isn’t something she has to forge by herself.
“Learning about an Asian American comedian essentially in an academic context really legitimizes the existence of Asian American comedy,” Chee said. “So it feels so nice to be a part of something where I’m not breaking any new ground. I’m just joining a tradition.”
Photo by Gabrielle Lewis
Will McCoy, an aspiring comedian based in D.C., enjoyed watching Chee’s set from a comedian’s perspective — and he especially liked hearing the newer jokes Chee was trying out.
“You can usually tell when a comic is trying out new material. Typically, they’re not as confident in it [the joke], and when they get the reaction that they really like, they’re surprised by it,” McCoy said. “I liked it. I liked how comfortable she was on the stage.”
Park notices that some of his students tend to disregard their passions to pursue a lucrative career instead. But he thinks Chee represents that people can do what they love and truly succeed.
Senior marketing and managing major Sarah Nguyen, who is also an aspiring entertainer, felt inspired from speaking to Chee during a pre-show meet-and-greet and listening to her talk with Park.
“To see somebody who’s successful in it [entertainment] but is still so young and has a lot of room to grow and will make it big in the comedy world is really exciting,” Nguyen said. “She just felt so human and so relatable, and it was really refreshing.”