One Woman’s Twitter Story Brilliantly Captures the Massive Influence of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’

“Crazy Rich Asians,” the adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s book of the same title, has made a huge impact on many Asian Americans including Huffington Post editor Kimberly Yam.

In a series of Twitter posts, Yam begins sharing a story of her father delivering food to her class in 3rd grade where the other children made fun of him and his accent.

At age 9, Yam learned that a girl at a ballet camp she attended hated her and thought that she had “ugly shaped” eyes.

Her classmates dressed up as “Asian tourists” for Halloween when she was 16 years old and taped their eyes back.

“You don’t want people thinking you’re uptight. You laugh along with everyone else. You don’t want to be Chinese anymore,” she wrote in a follow-up tweet.

Then, at 17, she met other Asians while in college, and one boy asked her why she doesn’t speak her family’s language.

“But you know you rejected your culture a long time ago. You know you refused to speak Chinese & you remember calling your mother’s food ‘disgusting.’ It’s f***ed. It clicks. It’s a race to reclaim everything you’ve hated about yourself. For the 1st time, you want to be Chinese,” she wrote.

Yam spent several years trying to “repatriate” herself and getting her family’s name tattooed on her skin.

The beautiful moment came when she watched “Crazy Rich Asians.”

As lead actress Constance Wu said, quoting director Jon M. Chu when she revealed why the film means so much to her and other people in the Asian American community, “Crazy Rich Asians” is “more than a movie — it’s a movement.”

Featured Image Screenshot via YouTube / Warner Bros. Pictures