When We Eat Our Own

Constance Wu & the impossible expectations of representation

Constance Wu was all over the media this past week on a redemption tour of sorts as she promotes her new book, a memoir in essays called Making a Scene. Like many Asian Americans, I’ve had ambivalent, sometimes even negative, feelings about her. I heard the rumors — that she was high-strung, a perfectionist. That she was strangely reclusive and regularly declined to hang out with her co-stars in order to memorize her lines. That the other actors from Fresh Off the Boat and Crazy Rich Asians…