Photos: @sesamestreet @simuliu
Ji-Young, the seven-year-old Korean-American who loves playing her electric guitar and skateboarding, will make her debut next week. Ji-Young won’t just be sharing her love for rock music and tteokbokki, or Korean rice cakes, on the show; she will also play a role in countering anti-Asian bias and harassment at a time of heightened awareness around the issue.
Sesame Street is welcoming its new neighbor, Ji-Young, the very first Asian American Muppet to be part of the 50-year old children show.
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that produces Sesame Street, said it created Ji-Young to support families of Asian and Pacific Islander heritage as part of its racial justice initiative, Coming Together.
Sesame Workshop introduced the initiative in the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and as its stand against racism and violence targeting Asians and Asian Americans which surged during the pandemic.
Ji-Young, the seven-year-old Korean-American who loves playing her electric guitar and skateboarding, will make her debut next week.
Ji-Young won’t just be sharing her love for rock music and tteokbokki, or Korean rice cakes, on the show; she will also play a role in countering anti-Asian bias and harassment at a time of heightened awareness around the issue.
The show has had human characters and guests of Asian descent, including Alan Muraoka, who is Japanese-American and owns the fictional Hooper’s Store.
In June, Sesame Street released a video called “Proud of Your Eyes,” in which Mr. Muraoka helped Analyn, a Filipino-American girl, after she was teased about the shape of her eyes.
Muraoka and Wes, a puppet, told Analyn that her eyes were beautiful and part of what made her who she was.
Speaking with the New York Times, Nancy Wang Yuen, a sociology professor at Biola University in La Mirada, Calif., and an expert on race and racism in Hollywood, she said that when she first immigrated to the United States from Taiwan at age 5, she learned more English from Sesame Street than from the E.S.L. classes at her school.
The show was more diverse than most children’s programming of the time, but Ms. Yuen said it was missing characters who looked like her when she was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s.
“I think having this Muppet who is more culturally specific and is able to speak another language, especially in the current time of rising anti-Asian hate, is so essential to representation,” she said.
Ji-Young made her television debut on the Today show on NBC last Monday, November 15.
“You know what’s really cool about Sesame Street is that no matter what you look like, or how you play or where you come from, you belong, and that’s really cool,” said Ji-Young.
She will be introduced on Sesame Street during a special episode on Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max and on local PBS stations.
The show, See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special, will also feature Marvel’s first Asian superhero, Simu Liu and Japanese professional tennis player, Naomi Osaka.
Liu, who plays the title character in Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings, welcomed Ji-Young to Sesame Street on Twitter last Monday.
He tweeted: “I’ve had the privilege of experiencing so many incredible things over the past couple of years, but this definitely sticks out. Welcome to Sesame Street, Ji-Young! I’m so glad I got to hang out with you.”
I’ve had the privilege of experiencing so many incredible things over the past couple of years, but this definitely sticks out.
Welcome to Sesame Street, Ji-Young! I’m so glad I got to hang out with you. https://t.co/AkzyuTRiXT
— Simu Liu (刘思慕) (@SimuLiu) November 15, 2021
Today, November 17 (Manila Time), Liu also made another post on Instagram regarding Ji-Young.
In the special episode, the residents of Sesame Street celebrate Neighbor Day, a community event with food, music and games. Someone off-screen tells Ji-Young to “go back home,” and then the other residents, guest stars and friends, like Elmo, offer her support.
Ji-Young’s puppeteer is Kathleen Kim, who is Korean-American.
“My one hope, obviously, is to actually help teach what racism is, help teach kids to be able to recognize it and then speak out against it. But then my other hope for Ji-Young is that she just normalizes seeing different kinds of looking kids on TV.”
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Sesame Street welcomes first Asian-American muppet, Ji-Young
Source: Pinoy Ako News
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