BREA BAKER: Welcome to "Bridging the Gap,"
where we gathered the creative powerhouses behind
your favorite Disney+ movies and series together for a real,
no-holds-barred conversation about identity,
community, and driving social change through storytelling.
I'm your host, Brea Baker.
I'm so excited to be joined by some of the brilliant talent
from Walt Disney Animation Studios, who recently worked
on "Raya and the Last Dragon."
Today, we're going to be talking about what it means to be first-
and second-generation American.
I was made fun of at school.
I purposely stopped speaking Arabic.
My peers that weren't Asian, obviously,
would remind me that I was Asian.
When you do have people behind the camera
telling the stories that are authentic to them,
it shines through.
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BREA BAKER: Hi, everyone.
I'm so excited to get into this conversation, because today,
we're going to talk about what it means to be first-
or second-generation American, how that's impacted each of you
personally, and also how it's shaped and inspired
you as storytellers.
I just want to start by asking, what
does it feel like to have made something
that means so much to people?
I'm so grateful that I was a part of the film.
And it was incredible to send a message of hope and unity
in order to build something bigger than oneself.
I had the privilege of growing up in many different places
and seeing different cultures.
So that aspect of "Raya," of all these cultures
coming together as one, was something that I feel like was
something personal to myself.
Definitely.
I mean, and as the writer, this has to be a dream come true.
It's a thing that I always wanted to give my kids,
an opportunity to look up at the screen and see a hero that
looks like them, that they could put on a cape and a hat
and a sword and feel like they could save the world.
'Cause it makes "Raya" such an incredible
thing that even exists,
but to be part of it is a dream beyond something
I could have ever hoped for.
When I first told my parents I wanted
to be an animator, first thing they responded with was,
what's an animator?
Coming from Cuba into the States,
they really didn't understand all the careers
that you could possibly have.
So when I told them that my dream was
to really work in films and tell stories,
they were excited for me.
They just didn't understand how you got there.
And neither did I, to be honest.
Now that I've brought my parents into the studio,
and I've been able to show them the process of animation
and how we create performances that then you
can see in the movies, they have a better understanding
of what it is I do every day.
It's been really incredible and rewarding,
as a first-generation Cuban American,
to be able to share with them the success behind the films
that I've made and seeing them be so proud of me.
So let's jump right in.
These words mean so many different things
to different people, based on where we come from.
So I think it's best to start with the basics of,
how do you each identify, as either first-
or second-generation American, and what has
that experience meant to you?
I guess, in technical terms, I would consider myself
first-generation American because I was born in Egypt,
and then I immigrated away from there.
Same with my parents.
But in some ways, I consider myself second-generation
just because I've spent most of my life in the West,
whereas my parents spent most of their life in Egypt.
And the cultural divide that we have between each other
is so vast that I kind of differentiate the
cultural generations that way.
That's interesting because I actually consider myself
first-generation, even though my parents were born in Cuba,
and then they immigrated here.
Now I'm looking at it differently.
I would consider myself a second-generation and my parents
first-generation.
I mean, I was born here.
My parents are refugees.
And so I think I'm like Rebecca.
It's always the generational thing.
I was like, I always thought I was first-generation, 'cause
they were refugees, and I was the first-generation American
in the family.
But I guess, by Yasser's definition,
I'm a second-generation American.
The thing that I think defines it the most for me is being,
like, in between cultures, right?
Like, for my parents, they are definitely Vietnamese.
And there's obviously a cultural separation between me
and them in that way, even though they're my parents
and I love them.
But then I also don't fit in completely.
I grew up in southern Arkansas, and
so I was always reminded that I didn't
look like everybody else.
So I was kind of like an in-between American,
in that sense, you know, 'cause my peers that weren't Asian,
obviously, would remind me that I was Asian,
or Vietnamese specifically.
And then my parents were always like, oh,
you're so not like us.
You're totally American.
By living in that middle place is where I think myself
and a lot of children of immigrants have grown up in.
A lot of us don't neatly fit into categories.
Yeah, that's so true.
On the one hand, feeling so American, and then
on the other hand, being reminded by
peers that you are not neatly in that box.
Would you all say that you had a similar experience to Qui
in that regard, or was that different based on where you
lived? 'Cause I know Miami is a very different
experience than Arkansas.
When you go to Miami, if you don't speak Spanish,
you feel out of place.
Right.
REBECCA PEREZ: So it wasn't until I moved out and actually
moved, after college, to San Francisco that I experienced
something outside of my culture and realized just how
different I was in comparison.
And there is a bit of, like, figuring out how
to assimilate to a situation.
I almost feel like, as immigrants, you almost feel
like, depending on the situation you're in, you lean
into whatever works, right?
And when you're at home, you're whatever works there.
But it's all you.
That's the irony.
It's really hard to find your identity
when you're kind of faced with that situation.
For me, living in Egypt and the U.S. and Australia,
they all have very different cultures
and very different ideas.
Trying to fit in was always a challenge because I always felt
like I had to change myself.
When we first immigrated from Egypt to Australia,
the big cultural divide there was so drastic.
And we moved into this small,
majority-white small town, maybe about 100,000 people.
So we were only maybe one of two families that were immigrants.
I was made fun of at school, and I purposely
stopped speaking Arabic.
It was all because I was trying so hard to fit in.
To me, it's a little bit of an unfortunate thing, because if I
were to go back to that, I would more
embrace that heritage, because to me,
that's far more enriching.
And it's so interesting to see the difference
between that coming of age and, like,
that fitting in happening when you're more
fully formed in your personality versus when you're a child
and you feel some of those pressures a bit deeper.
So now how did you navigate that balancing act?
Trying to fit in while also trying to be authentically
who you are in multiple homes?
So I found comfort in finding people in the community who
shared the similar ideas, who embraced my background
and what I have to offer, and then just kind of, like,
situating myself within those groups.
Introducing those groups also to my family
so that my family knows, like, what I'm surrounding
myself with, and then just kind of keeping
that circle pretty tight.
Yeah, and what about you two?
I think I also-- in hindsight now,
I realize that the friends I befriended were similar to me
but very different, right?
There were also kids who had multiple cultures,
and in every aspect, right? 'Cause even Caucasian friends
who come from maybe a place that they don't fully fit in-- maybe
there's someone who identifies in the LGBTQ community--
already, they're dealing with multiple versions of themselves
in different spaces.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know how much I tried to be anything.
You know, you kind of just accidentally do that, right?
Like, you are what your friends are, right?
Like, I grew up primarily in a middle-class,
like, Black neighborhood.
So that was definitely part of who I was.
It wasn't till I left that neighborhood
that I realized that I wasn't exactly like my friends,
you know?
At a certain point, your world is
first your house, then your neighborhood, then the city.
And then it gets bigger and bigger, right?
Right.
But one of the things that helped affect my self-esteem
was a grand lie that my parents told me, and my grandma told me.
And that was that my small town, in isolation,
was the only town that wasn't Vietnamese in all of America.
Even when I knew it was a lie, I held onto it
'cause it was the one little thing that was like,
you know what?
It might not be actually true, but maybe I can make it true.
Right, yeah.
And so it was stuff like that that
kind of helped build me up.
I felt empowered by my identity in kind
of the most indirect way.
When I was really small, I couldn't
speak English basically at all.
And my teachers told my parents that they needed
to stop speaking Vietnamese to me so I could
have a chance to speak English.
But this meant my grandmother, who only spoke Vietnamese,
couldn't speak to me anymore.
And I remember the conversation she
told me when I was around four.
"Right now, I have to stop talking to you.
What I need you to do is learn how to talk like them.
I know the superpower you're going to have one day is going
to be speaking like them and telling our stories using
their language."
It was the thing that made me have a mission.
It's my mission to tell their stories,
but it's also my mission to tell the stories
of anyone who often only gets to see themselves
in one kind of light.
How do you think being an American
with multiple cultural identities
has shaped your creative voice?
Especially in animation, it tends to be
a very male-dominated industry.
And I think, personally, what I feel
I bring that's authentic to myself--
and I wish that more women would join the field--
is the woman's perspective.
Right.
When you do have people behind the camera
telling the stories that are authentic to them,
it shines through.
And I feel like, as an animator, that's what I try to bring.
I gravitate towards strong, independent female characters
that I can bring a voice to, that I can bring that
to the world so I can show my girls an example
of what they can be in life.
Wow, and you nailed that with this.
When I was living in Egypt, my parents
introduced me to a famous Disney animated film,
and it was called "Aladdin." - Yeah.
YASSER HAMED: And something about that film
really resonated with me.
It had such good representation of my culture.
And just seeing the beauty of what the animators had done
really made me push hard to want to be able to do
something like that in my life.
The idea of sharing a story like that, kind of introducing
the world to a different culture and understanding those values
were something that I felt like really resonated with me.
The privilege of growing up in all these different places
is, I've been able to absorb different cultures
and different ideas,
and to bring that back into the world of storytelling
is a way that I can contribute to the world.
When you're not from that culture,
you end up having to do it through research.
And then you go and sit down, and you write this.
And you want to honor all of that.
But what happens, then-- it becomes like a history lesson.
It becomes, like, this high-end, kind of, version that feels
very stiff and un-lived in.
"Raya" is a good example of, when we first hit that movie,
I know that we really desperately wanted
to honor and show a lot of respect to the cultures
that we were inspired by.
I wanted "Raya" to feel like an authentic kid who
made mistakes, who was fallible, because there was me
and Fawn, who is head of story, who's Thai, and Adele,
who's my co-writer, who's Malaysian.
There were people that were authentically
from that culture.
We were able to go, this is what we really are.
That type of storytelling can only come from those
who come from those cultures.
YASSER HAMED: My parents moved to Australia
because they wanted to find a better life for me.
When I first told them that I wanted to be a filmmaker,
they were very supportive.
The only thing that they've expected from me
was to take that opportunity and make the most of it.
The project I'm most proud of is "Frozen 2."
As a crowd supervisor, I was able to work with the art
directors and the animators to create
palettes that represented people from all around the world.
We wanted Arendelle to feel like it
was a fictional world, but not necessarily
in a specific place.
So we wanted to be able to make sure that it
was welcoming of all cultures.
I felt very excited to see it on the screen
and just to see audiences' reaction to the increased
diversity and how much more acceptance
there was towards the characters in the film.
And that's something that was incredibly special.
What are your hopes for the future
of representation, both behind and in front of the camera?
I think it's important for studios
to increase diversity in the workplace
and increase representation.
Having people from different cultures
and different backgrounds come into the workplace--
it increases the capacity for creativity.
It brings new ideas.
I think, overall, it enriches the content.
We're all better off for it.
Definitely, yeah.
Growing up, I actually had no idea
that there was such a career.
Like, people actually got paid to make movies?
And then when I got into the industry
and realized the power, the connection you can make,
and the voice you can give--
"Raya" is a perfect example, and so
is "Encanto," which is the last film that I just wrapped on.
It's tapping into a culture and showing a perspective
of a community that I hadn't seen growing up
and that I wish I had.
I'm grateful I'm being a part of it and a voice
so that other girls and kids that are Latin-descent
can see themselves on screen and know
that there is a possibility beyond them,
as long as they dare to dream.
I think it's a huge responsibility
to be able to tell stories that kind of uplift our society,
you know?
And I think, for me, a personal mission has always
been to try to create heroes for those who don't often
get to see themselves depicted that way. 'Cause often,
when you're not of a certain look, sex, and gender
and sexuality, you often are kind of
put in small little categories and boxes, you know?
You're a supporting character to them.
I think it's such a great time to be a creator right now.
There's so many avenues, everything from theatrical
to streaming.
There's just so many more opportunities
to be able to tell so many more diverse stories,
and in that diversity allows us to be able to tell more
stories for those who need it.
One million percent.
A lot of-- you being a part of this project,
you being a part of this project--
even though you're not Southeast Asian, there's still an element
that you're able to bring to it and feel reflected.
And again, it shows that we do have so much more in common.
So we've talked a lot about who supported you
all in those balancing acts, whether that was family members
or other stories that you had seen as a child.
Whether it's for your children or for just
the next generation, or responsibility you feel to help
them balance their cultural identities
and for that to be just a little bit smoother
than it was for each of you?
I think it's important for us to make more movies. Movies
like "Raya" representing Asian cultures,
movies like "Encanto" representing
Latin American culture.
I think the more that we can diversify our plate, the more
that we can introduce the next generation
to this globalized world which we now live in.
When you're Hispanic or Latin, you're the cleaning lady.
You are the caregiver, you know, the nanny.
And there's so much more to our culture, right?
As there is for every culture.
And I think that's the responsibility
that a company like Disney or storytellers
like us afford the next generation,
is to not just see themselves in bigger arenas --
like seeing "Raya" as, like, this strong, independent
person -- but also flawed, because that's a truth of who we are.
We're not the perfect one.
So the more content we create that discusses and points out
different cultures and experiences,
the more opportunities we get to create those nuances
in those performances.
And not every character has to hinge and be the hero.
And they can't-- they have to be perfect.
No, because nobody is.
You know, my kids are biracial.
The half of them that is Caucasian
is very well taken care of in America.
I just want them to be able to feel as much pride,
as much identity, as much gratitude of that half of them
as they do of the other half.
Thank you so much for coming and being
a part of this conversation.
It was so beautiful, and I'm really
looking forward to everything that you
all are part of in the future.
Oh, thank you so much.
Thank you for having us.
BREA BAKER: To see some of the Walt Disney Animation Studios
films our guests have brought to life,
you can stream their amazing work,
including "Raya and the Last Dragon," now on Disney+.
We'll see you next time.
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