BY EMILIE WEINBECK, FEATURES EDITOR
“Sesame Street” is introducing its first Asian American Muppet to the show. The new Muppets name will be Ji-Young who is seven years old and loves playing her electric guitar and skateboarding. Ji-Young will be playing more of a role than just sharing her love for rock music and tteokbokki, or spicy Korean rice cakes.
The Muppet will also play a key role in countering anti-Asian bias and harassment which has become a very relevant issue in our society today. Sesame Workshop, which is the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street,” says that it created Ji-Young to help support families of Asian heritage as part of its new racial justice initiative, Coming Together.
Sesame Workshop launched Coming Together during the summer of 2020 after the tragic murder of George Floyd. It was also around this time that violence targeting Asians and Asian Americans surged as the pandemic continued.
“Sesame Street” has been on TV for over 50 years and Ji-Young is its first ever Asian American Muppet. The show in the past has had human characters and guests who are of Asian descent, including Alan Muroka, who is a Japanese American and owns the fictional Hooper’s Store seen on the show.
In June, “Sesame Street” released a video titled “Proud of Your Eyes,” where Muroka helped Analyn, a Filipino American girl, after she had been teased about the shape of her eyes. Muroka and Wes, a puppet seen on the show, told Analyn her eyes were beautiful and that they were part of what made her unique and who she is today.
Nancy Wang Yuen, who is a sociology professor at Biola University in La Mirada, California, and is an expert on race and racism in Hollywood, said that when she first immigrated to the United States from Taiwan at the age of five, she learned more English from “Sesame Street” than from her E.S.L. classes at school.
The show was much more diverse than most of the children’s programming at the time, but Yuen said it was missing characters who looked like her while she was growing up in the 1980s and 90s.
“I think having this Muppet who is more culturally specific and is able to speak another language, especially in the current time of rising anti-Asian hate, is so essential to representation,” she said.
Ji-Young made her first Television debut Monday on the “Today” show on NBC. “You know what’s really cool about ‘Sesame Street’ is that no matter what you look like, or how you play or where you come from, you belong, and that’s really cool,” said Ji-Young.
She will be officially introduced on “Sesame Street” during a special episode airing on Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max and local PBS stations. The show, “See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special,” will also feature Simu Liu and star tennis player Naomi Osaka.
Mr. Liu, who plays the title character of “Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings,” welcomed Ji-Young to “Sesame Street” on Twitter this Monday, after the Associated Press reported the new Muppets debut. The tweet read, “I’ve had the privilege of experiencing so many incredible things over the past couple of years, but this definitely sticks out,” Mr. Liu said. “Welcome to Sesame Street, Ji-Young! I’m so glad I got to hang out with you.”
Ji-Young’s puppeteer is Kathleen Kim, who is a Korean American. “My one hope, obviously, is to actually help teach what racism is, help teach kids to be able to recognize it and then speak out against it,”. Kim, 41, told The A.P. “But then my other hope for Ji-Young is that she just normalizes seeing different kinds of looking kids on TV.”
