The Indelible Power of Mixed Asian Women in Rock

As Zauner herself observes, there’s something inherently thrilling and defiant about being an Asian woman rock star. The tension between societally defined conventions of femininity and the rough, confrontational nature of rock, particularly the punk-derived alternative umbrella, exists for all women in the genre. Indeed, it has proven to be a rich inspiration for plenty of artists over the decades. For Asian women, crass tropes like the “eternal foreigner” or the submissive, hypersexualized “lotus blossom” provide all the more dramatic contrast for an assertive, charismatic, all-American rock singer. Beyond that, the messy, raw emotionality of their music shatters stereotypes of Asians as cold and unfeeling.

In a 2022 Rolling Stone “Musicians on Musicians” feature, also by Martoccio, Zauner and O spoke about their experiences as mixed Asian women in rock: “I really didn’t like feeling like people were projecting some kind of stereotype on me in a way that I had no control over,” Zauner said. “I never wanted anyone to think of me as docile, or agreeable, or hyper-feminine. In some ways, my personality morphed into something that was in direct opposition to that.”

In that same conversation, O also noted that it has only been in recent years, with the emergence of artists like Zauner, that interviewers and the media have seriously noted her ethnic identity.

“The question I always got was, ‘How does it feel to be a woman?’” O said. “Being part Korean—and just Korean culture in general—was invisible growing up in the States. I’m still getting more in touch with that aspect of me, because it was invisible for so long.”

“The question I always got was, ‘How does it feel to be a woman?’ Being part Korean—and just Korean culture in general—was invisible growing up in the States. I’m still getting more in touch with that aspect of me, because it was invisible for so long.”

In her 2011 book The Souls of Mixed Folk, scholar Michele Elam observes that people of multiracial backgrounds have often been understood by the mainstream less as people and more as metaphors for society. In the eras of slavery and segregation, narratives of the alienated “tragic mulatto” exemplified the toll of anti-Black racism and Jim Crow segregation. Since the late 20th century, the post-Loving v. Virginia rise of mixed race people in the United States has conversely been understood as a harbinger of racism’s demise, ushering in the liberal, integrated, post-racial future.

This oversimplification of mixed experiences can also manifest within Asian diasporic communities. Henry Golding’s appearance gets picked apart in the public sphere to settle whether he looks “Asian” enough to play a “Crazy Rich” one. Interracial dating is a contentious, oft-discussed topic, yet less discussed are the viewpoints of the mixed-race individuals who come from such unions.

Whether demeaning or well-intentioned, these popular conceptions of multiraciality-as-metaphor never much consider mixed-race individuals as fully formed human beings, endowed with the same depth of feeling and thought as anyone else. It’s here where the music of Rodrigo, Mitski, Zauner, O, and others is a powerful corrective. Despite their evident stylistic differences, all of these women are crafters of evocative, deeply felt lyrics and music. While the details are often personally or culturally specific, the emotions are universal. Regardless of your background, when you hear these songs, you inhabit a mixed-race Asian woman’s anger, her joy, her heartbreak. Her full human complexity is undeniable; you have felt it as your own.

These artists’ existence in the broadly defined indie rock space is also meaningful. (Though Rodrigo is a pop artist, sonically, GUTS is as influenced by acts like Elvis Costello and Weezer as by Taylor Swift, and it’s earned her, as The New Yorker’s Jay Caspian Kang put it, a noted contingent of “Gen X dad” fans. ) The style has long been a place for lyrical emotionality and introspective rumination, but it has also been a genre whose public faces were, by and large, white men. This contingent of artists has laid new claim to this genre, using indie rock’s emotive capabilities towards fresh ends.