How Mindy Kaling's 'Never Have I Ever' is Making Being Hapa Cool

By KCY

This weekend, I binge watched Mindy Kaling’s Never Have I Ever, a coming of age series about a fifteen-year-old Indian girl living in Sherman Oaks and how she deals with her grief after losing her father. Or how she avoids dealing with her father’s death: by focusing on trying to have sex with the hottest guy in school, Paxton Hall-Yoshida, a guy who doesn’t even know she exists.

While I was excited to see Netflix invest in a series focused on an Indian protagonist who didn’t conform to stereotypes, I was even more excited to see that said hot guy was half Japanese.

I was excited for two reasons:

1.     The Asian guy was the hot dumb jock, not the super computer nerd.

2.     Said Asian guy was Hapa.

It’s sad to say that even in the twenty-first century, the Asian guy is still type casted as the nerd, the computer whiz, the dork. I guess at least, Asian people get to play Asian people, unlike in Breakfast at Tiffany’s where the Asian neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi, was played by a Caucasian man, Mickey Rooney. And at least, they are no longer being portrayed like Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles. Still, it’s not easy to find a movie or a series where the Asian guy is not smart or dorky. The only movie which came close to having an Asian guy as the heartthrob was Crazy Rich Asians….and that was a movie called Crazy Rich Asians. Need I say more.

In Never Have I Ever, though, Paxton Hall-Yoshida breaks all Asian stereotypes. He’s the hot guy with the chiseled body. He’s the guy girls swoon after. He’s the jock…and…he’s dumb. So dumb, that he has to repeat a sophomore history class as a junior. Having an Asian guy as the James Dean or Jordan Catalano allows me to dream that there is still hope for Hollywood.

Going next to number two above. Paxton Hall-Yoshida was Hapa, a Hawaiian word for a person who is partially of Asian or Pacific Islander descent. This Hapa’s heart swelled with joy and pride when she saw a Hapa as the love interest.

There was a time when being Hapa wasn’t very acceptable. Today, though, it’s different. Every other kid seems to be Hapa, unlike when I was growing up. I was a unicorn, a unicorn who didn’t fit in with my Asian culture or my other half. I wasn’t Asian enough for Asians, but I was too Asian for non-Asians. Unfortunately, this led me to become ashamed of being Hapa, as if I was half a person. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I began to embrace being Hapa. Funny enough, it took going to Hawaii and having someone compliment me on being Hapa before I began to be proud of my Hapa-ness.

So, seeing a Hapa in Never Have I Ever was a big deal to me. It was an even bigger deal that they didn’t bother to hide that he was Hapa (Hello! Paxton Hall-Yoshida). I was even more ecstatic to see said Hapa as the cool, good looking guy. Good job, Mindy Kaling!

I’m looking forward to seeing more series and movies like Never Have I Ever, where stereotypes are broken. It’s time, Hollywood, it’s about time.