If you're an Asian American who's been online since the early aughts, you will probably consider Phil Yu's Angry Asian Man blog an institution. Phil has been blogging about Asian American culture since 2001, and is a highly respected community figure. (He's also just an incredibly cool dude.) Every year, to fund the website, he runs a subscriber drive where you can buy a t-shirt with the blog's motto, "Stay Angry," on it, designed by a different artist every time. IndieWire wrote a cool article about it here: https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/always-be-my-maybe-stay-angry-asian-man-t-shirt-netflix-1202146399/
In 2017, after having made a little bit of a name for myself with my work in comics, Phil reached out and asked me if I'd be interested in doing the next shirt design. Obviously I wasn't going to say no. Despite being born overseas, I'd spent most of my life in the US growing up extremely sheltered in all-white middle class communities, and the AAM blog was absolutely my most formative first step into being educated on the intersections of race, class, and understanding my own complicated identity as an Asian immigrant in America, and recognizing injustices where I did not see them before. Suffice it to say that AAM has been incredibly important to me. Being able to contribute in this small way was such an honor.
I have no idea how it happened, but I think it was just a serendipitous moment where there were lots of cool things being made by cool Asian Americans right around the same time. Again, I cannot overstate the presence of AAM in the lives of Millennial Asian Americans, particularly creatives, so I guess it makes sense then that a bunch of them would want to put in some sort of really obvious visual shoutout to the community, and what easier way to do so than rocking an AAM shirt? ...It just happened to be around the time my design was out, so now, uh... my shirt has become something of an iconic thing in AsAm media! :O
Anyway, just a cool small thing I wanted to share. I did not expect my humble little shirt design to become what it did, but of all the things I've made in my professional career, this is definitely one of the things I'm most proud to have contributed to the Asian American community. If you'd like one, you can buy one here!
