Since its inception, “Sesame Street” always had a great track record for inclusivity, and today brings another fun new character to the show’s diverse citizenry.
Ji-Young is making history as the first Asian American muppet in “Sesame Street” history.
She’s a seven-year old Korean-American who loves skateboarding and shredding on her guitar, and hopes to introduce her neighbors to great food she grew up with, like tteokbokki (chewy rice cakes) with her halmoni (grandmother).
As Yahoo Entertainment notes, Ji-Young will formally be introduced in “See Us Coming Together: A Sesame Street Special” that will premiere on Thanksgiving Day on HBO Max, “Sesame Street” social media platforms, and local PBS stations. The special will also feature Asian-American celebrities Simu Liu, Padma Lakshmi, and Naomi Osaka.
Ji-Young’s puppeteer, Kathleen Kim, 41, has been a lifelong "Sesame Street" fan and started training in puppetry in her 30s. She was accepted into the Sesame Street Workshop in 2014 and became a full time part of the team the next year.
Developing a whole new character -- and one that is Korean American like Kim herself -- brought things to a whole other exciting level.
“I feel like I have a lot of weight that maybe I’m putting on myself to teach these lessons and to be this representative that I did not have as a kid,” Kim said.
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Kay Wilson Stallings, executive vice-president of Creative and Production for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind “Sesame Street" revealed that as part of the show's continued dedication to diversity, they created two task forces: one to look at content and the other to examine diversity in the show.
The culmination of their work was “Coming Together,” a multi-year initiative addressing how to talk to children about race, ethnicity, and culture. The initiative involves outside experts and a cross-section of employees, known as the “culture trust,” who weigh in on every aspect of a new muppet.
In addition to Ji-Young, the series previousl added 8-year old Tamir, one of the first Black puppets to discuss race issues.
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“Sesame Street” felt an urgency to put their research into action. While it usually takes a couple years to get a new muppet character together, the two new characters were developed in a few months. But that doesn’t mean thought wasn’t put into developing them. For Kim, she definitely wanted to avoid “generically pan-Asian” stereotypes.
“Because that’s something that all Asian Americans have experienced,” Kim told the Associated Press, who got the first scoop on the new character. “They kind of want to lump us into this monolithic ‘Asian.’ So it was very important that she was specifically Korean American, not just like, generically Korean, but she was born here.”
“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. But then my other hope for Ji-Young is that she just normalizes seeing different kinds of looking kids on TV.”
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And Ji-Young herself did a little research too, and found some interesting facts about the name the show gave her.
“So in Korean,” Ji-Young explained, “traditionally the two syllables they each mean something different, and Ji means, like, smart or wise. And Young means, like, brave or courageous and strong.” But we were looking it up and guess what? Ji also means sesame.”
Ji-Young will be heavily present throughout the show's 53rd season next year popping up in various digital programs, live-action, and animated.
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