'Fresh Off the Boat' author doesn't watch the TV series
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Eddie Huang published Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir, a book detailing his Taiwanese family’s experience in America, in 2013. Two years later, it was adapted into a sitcom of the same name for ABC—that Huang doesn’t watch.
Huang, who narrates the show, has expressed his doubts from the beginning: Before Fresh Off the Boat even premiered, he wrote an essay for Vulture about the obstacles he faced bringing his story to TV. ABC’s approach “was to tell a universal, ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian-Americans resembling moo go gai pan written by a Persian-American who cut her teeth on race relations writing for Seth MacFarlane.” This is not the approach Huang wanted to take—and 11 episodes in, Huang’s making his feelings on the show known.
“I’m happy people of color are able to see a reflection of themselves through [Fresh Off the Boat],” he wrote on Twitter Tuesday night, “but I don’t recognize it.” “I don’t think it is helping us to perpetuate an artificial representation of Asian American lives and we should address it,” he continued.
His tweets weren’t all negative though: “My only goal was to represent my Taiwanese-Chinese-American experience & I did that,” he wrote. “We also proved viewers want diverse content so make it!” See all his tweets on the subject below.
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