8 Badass Asian-Americans We Can't Overlook This Women's History Month

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Asian-Americans talk a lot about the need for representation in Hollywood we see you (and feel seen!), “Crazy Rich Asians” but there’s room for strides in representation in pretty much every field. That’s especially true for Asian-American women.

Not only do Asian-American women have to contend with the glass ceiling, but we also have to worry about the “bamboo ceiling” : an invisible barrier that systematically keeps Asians out of leadership positions in spite of success in the workplace and in school.

We’ve got a long way to go, but some of the work has already been done; let’s not forget all the women who came before us and paved the way. 

Below to mark Women’s History Month we give props to eight Asian-American pioneers who became heroines in their respective fields. This is by no means a comprehensive list, so feel free to share who would have made your list in the comments.

Patsy Mink (1927–2002), the first woman of color in Congress

Talk about a trailblazer: Patsy Mink , a third-generation Japanese-American, became the first Asian-American woman (and the first woman from an ethnic minority group) to be elected to the United States Congress in 1964.

In her four decades there, she worked to amplify the voices and rights of immigrants, women and children. Mink also aggressively championed Title IX , the legislation that brought academic and athletic equity to American educational institutions. 

“It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority,” she once said of her lone-wolf voting track record. “But it is more often more important to be ahead of the majority, and this means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if necessary.”

In 1972, Mink became the first Asian-American to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. On the eve of the 2016 election, Mink’s daughter, Gwendolyn, reflected on her mother’s enduring legacy.

“My mother taught me that an election is not an end in itself, but rather an opening to do the hard work of securing justice, peace and the well being of all,” she wrote.

Anna May Wong (1905-1961), Hollywood screen goddess

No one did sultry better than Anna May Wong : The Los Angeles-born screen siren landed her breakthrough role  at age 17 in 1922’s “The Toll of the Sea.” Wong was also quite the clotheshorse — in 1934, the Mayfair Mannequin Society of New York voted her the “world’s best-dressed woman ,” a massive fashion world honor at the time.

Success in Hollywood came, but certainly not equal to her talent. As her Turner Classic Movie bio sums it up, stateside audiences considered Wong either “too Chinese” or “too American.” (In Europe, the actress received a wider range of roles and due critical acclaim.) 

Later on, Wong reflected on being pigeonholed in an interview with journalist Doris Mackie .

“I was so tired of the parts I had to play,” she said . “Why is it that the screen Chinese is always the villain? And so crude a villain — murderous, treacherous, a snake in the grass.”

Kalpana Chawla (1961-2003), the first Indian-American female astronaut

Born in Karnal, India, Kalpana Chawla immigrated to the U.S. for college and to pursue her girlhood dream of becoming an astronaut. In 1997, Chawla made that happen, making 252 orbits of the Earth in just over two weeks as part of the Columbia crew on flight STS-87. In the process, she became the first Indian-American woman  and second Indian-American person to go into space. 

In 2000, Chawla was selected for her second voyage into space, serving as a mission specialist on the ill-fated STS-107 shuttle Columbia . The shuttle launched on Jan. 16, 2003. Upon returning a few weeks later, Columbia broke up during re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere. The entire crew of seven was killed.

Chawla’s life may have been brief, but her legacy lives on. So does her dreamy description of what sunrise and sunsets look like in space, as she recounted to India Today after the 1997 flight:

It is almost as if everything is in fast forward. It is totally dark. Then dark to violet, to orange and red — all this right at the thin band of atmosphere —and then it’s sunrise. At the sunset, there was a moon — its crescent was razor sharp and the colour was dusty silvery. Then the moon raced away from us and was lost in the glow of the earth’s curvature. Almost like a story book that you read as a child. Gosh, I enjoyed every moment up there.

Cecilia Chung, transgender rights activist (born 1965) 

Cecilia Chung  has tirelessly advocated for transgender rights for more than 20 years, first in San Francisco, and later, nationwide. 

As an Asian transgender woman living with HIV, she’s spent her life fighting to end discrimination, stigma and violence across marginalized communities, first as the former chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and then on the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

“When I was coming into the movement [in the early ’90s], transgender people were dying left and right — not just because of violence, but because of what we later found out was HIV,” she told Them magazine recently. “We weren’t just fighting for our rights, we were fighting for our lives by demanding treatment and more research. We were also demanding to be seen as human beings.”

Still fighting today, Chung works at the Transgender Law Center and directs Positively Trans,  a project that uses research, policy advocacy and narrative to address the systematic inequalities that lead to poor health and high rates of HIV/AIDS in the transgender community.

Chien-Shiung Wu, the “first lady of physics ” (1912-1997)

Chien-Shiung Wu is the kind of science genius that Google Doodles dreams are made of: The Chinese-born, American-trained physicist worked on the Manhattan Project , which helped the United States develop the atomic bomb during World War II. She also performed game-changing experiments in physics that disproved the law of conservation of parity . 

In 1975, she became the first female president of the American Physical Society.

Deemed the “Chinese Marie Curie” for her wide breadth of work, Wu once remarked,  “There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes, and that is not going to the lab at all.”

Amy Tan, award-winning memoirist and author (born 1952)