Director Crystal Kwok on Jackie Chan, sex talk and where Asians fitted into segregated US South
- The former actress is investigating her family’s experience in the ‘binary’ American South in new documentary Not Black and White
- Her habit of challenging the status quo earned her the nickname ‘Flip-lip’ as a child
Small talk I learned to talk back at a very young age, so as early as I remember, my mother called me “Flip-lip”. It was my calling to challenge things and that stuck. I’m the middle child of three girls. Yes, the black sheep, blamed for everything even if I wasn’t in the room. I have a favourite word now – liminal, the betwixt and between place – and I think I’ve always been in that blurry space. I was born in San Francisco (in 1966) but we moved to Hong Kong when I was three and stayed six years.
My first language, I guess, is English but I went to a local school, Maryknoll, where everybody spoke Cantonese. I used to have a tape recorder and I’d record myself and my sisters, and when we left I had a Chinese accent.
Crystal clear Then I went to a very small, all-girls Catholic high school, the Convent of the Sacred Heart, in San Francisco. It was in a mansion and we’d have strawberries and champagne for family-brunch weekends – ridiculous. For a long time, I was in my shell.
But in my senior year I was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the ACT (American Conservatory Theater) – I was just a little fairy but guess who played Titania? Annette Bening. Then I pursued theatre and did drama at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles).
Game changer Oh god, I hate talking about that Miss Chinatown pageant (Kwok won the USA title in 1987, in San Francisco). OK, I have to credit that horrible, stupid process … because you wear these cheongsams, because you have photos taken with these ham sup lohs (dirty old men), you learn how to take care of your body and how these men are. And maybe, maybe, that woke me up in some way. It’s the first reality hit that you’re becoming an adult female.
