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Jay Caspian Kang

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Jay Caspian Kang
Born (1979-12-31) December 31, 1979 (age 44)
Seoul, South Korea
NationalityAmerican
EducationBowdoin College (BA)
Columbia University (MFA)
Occupation(s)Writer, editor
EmployerThe New York Times
Notable workThe Dead Do Not Improve

Jay Caspian Kang (born December 31, 1979) is an American writer, editor, television journalist and podcast host. He is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and the opinion section of The New York Times. Previously he was an editor of Grantland, then of the science and technology blog Elements at The New Yorker. He was also an Emmy-nominated correspondent on Vice News Tonight and cohosts the podcast Time to Say Goodbye. His debut novel The Dead Do Not Improve was released by the Hogarth/Random House in the summer of 2012. In 2021, he published The Loneliest Americans, a memoir and reported work examining Asian American identity.

Early life and education

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Kang was born in Seoul, South Korea, on New Year's Eve 1979.[1] He grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while his father obtained his post-doctorate degree in organic chemistry at Harvard[2] and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College[3] and received his Master's of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Columbia University in 2005.[1]

Career

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Early career

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After receiving his MFA, Kang spent a number of years in San Francisco and Los Angeles teaching creative writing and world history.[1] He says he spent more than 40 hours a week playing poker at the Commerce Casino during this time.[1] In January 2010, Kang began writing for literary basketball blog FreeDarko. In his first contribution to the blog, "The Lives of Others," Kang wrote an analysis of how Taiwanese-American basketball player Jeremy Lin and Chinese-American rapper MC Jin "offered an alternative interpretation of what it meant to be an Asian-American."[1] He asserted that Asian-Americans "have been conditioned our entire lives to imagine White," and that "Like Jin before him, what Jeremy Lin represents is a re-conception of our bodies, a visible measure of how the emasculated Asian-American body might measure up to the mythic legion of Big Black supermen."[4] Kang has continued to write about race throughout his career, with "A significant majority of Kang's columns, television segments, and magazine features hav[ing] a central focus on the role of race in culture."[1]

Kang was subsequently noticed in 2010 by several prominent editors[1][5][6][7] for his work, "The High is Always the Pain and the Pain is Always the High", a lengthy first-person essay concerning his gambling addiction. The work has been seen as a turning point in Kang's career.[1]

The Dead Do Not Improve

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Kang's debut novel The Dead Do Not Improve was released in 2012 by Hogarth/Random House.[8] The book was summarized by Kirkus Book Reviews as a "Pynchon-esque menagerie of California surfers, cops, thugs and dot-com workers [that] converge in a comic anti-noir."[9] The book revolves around a disgruntled MFA graduate named Philip Kim, who discovers that his elderly neighbor has been murdered, and who soon becomes the unlikely protagonist of a quickly unfolding mystery involving a struggle between fictionalized versions of two San Francisco institutions: Cafe Gratitude and Kink.com.[10] Kang has said that he wanted to write the book about Korean American male anger and reflect on how Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech shooting, was also Korean.[3]

Subsequent work

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Kang joined Vice in June 2016[11] as civil rights correspondent,[12] appearing on HBO's Vice News Tonight.[13] He was nominated for an Emmy Award for a 2016 segment of the show on high school students joining the national anthem protests of police brutality.[1] Kang is also a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.[13] Previously he was a founding editor of the ESPN sports and pop-culture blog Grantland,[14] and then served as editor of the science and technology blog Elements at The New Yorker from April to November 2014.[15]

In the spring of 2020, Kang began co-hosting the podcast Time to Say Goodbye with E. Tammy Kim and Andrew B. Liu.[16] Begun during the COVID-19 pandemic to discuss the pandemic in an international context, Time to Say Goodbye expanded to cover past and current events relevant to Asian and Asian American culture, politics, as well as general left-wing politics.[16]

In 2021, Kang became one of the authors of the newly introduced subscriber-only opinion newsletters of The New York Times.[17] Later in the year he published The Loneliest Americans, a part memoir, part reported work on Asian American experience.[18] It was named to NPR and Time's lists of best books of 2021.[19][20]

In September 2022, ESPN Films announced that production was complete on a 30 for 30 documentary on Michael Chang, directed by Kang.[21] The documentary, called American Son, was about Chang's 1989 French Open run and the coinciding Tiananmen Square massacre. In May 2023, Kang tweeted that ESPN decided to pull the documentary from its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.[22] In a pre-festival roundup, Variety had called the film "an astute, incisive directorial debut" for Kang.[23]

Personal life

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Kang is a thyroid cancer survivor.[1] He has remarked that "Surviving cancer can cleanse the soul, sure, but once you're left facing the rest of your life, a patient's vision can tunnel down to a list of demands."[24]

Kang is married and lives in Berkeley, California.[25] His daughter was born in January 2017.[1]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Ho, Karen K. (November 8, 2017). "The angry, witty, adventurous life of Jay Caspian Kang". Columbia Journalism Review.
  2. ^ Kang, Jay Caspian; Chen, Ronghui (August 28, 2019). "Where Does Affirmative Action Leave Asian-Americans?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 27, 2023.
  3. ^ a b Kang, Y. Peter (August 7, 2012). "Jay Caspian Kang Explores Korean American Male Anger in New Novel". Character Media.
  4. ^ Kang, Jay (January 14, 2010). "The Lives of Others". FreeDarko.com. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  5. ^ Sternbergh, Adam (March 28, 2011). "The Poker Writing of Jay Caspian Kang". The New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  6. ^ Pitzer, Andrea (November 11, 2010). "Losing in Vegas: Jay Caspian Kang's "literary moment"". Nieman Storyboard. The President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  7. ^ Pappademas, Alex (November 11, 2010). "Alex Pappademas: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010". Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  8. ^ Kang, Jay Caspian (August 9, 2012). "First Serial: The Dead Do Not Improve". Grantland.
  9. ^ "Jay Caspian Kang's The Dead No Not Improve". Kirkus Book Reviews. August 7, 2012.
  10. ^ "The Book We're Talking About: 'The Dead Do Not Improve' By Jay Caspian Kang". The Huffington Post. August 7, 2012.
  11. ^ O'Shea, Chris (June 15, 2016). "Vice Adds a Dozen". FishbowlNY. AdWeek. Retrieved December 20, 2016.
  12. ^ "Jay Caspian Kang joins Vice as civil rights correspondent". alldigitocracy.org. June 20, 2016. Retrieved December 20, 2016.
  13. ^ a b Prince, Richard (December 13, 2016). "Telling Our Truth in the Age of Trump". The Root. Retrieved December 20, 2016.
  14. ^ Sterne, Peter (November 13, 2014). "Jay Caspian Kang leaving The New Yorker for N.Y. Times Magazine". Politico. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  15. ^ "Jay Caspian Kang Named Editor of The New Yorker's Elements". Cision. April 30, 2014. Retrieved May 30, 2017.
  16. ^ a b Ro, Lauren (April 9, 2021). "Time to Say Goodbye Is the Only Asian American Podcast Saying the Hard Stuff". Vulture. Retrieved November 30, 2021.
  17. ^ Perlberg, Steven (August 12, 2021). "The New York Times has launched its long-awaited Substack competitor". Business Insider. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
  18. ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian King. Crown, $27 (272p) ISBN 978-0-525-57622-8". Publishers Weekly. August 24, 2021. Retrieved October 17, 2021.
  19. ^ "The 100 Must-Read Books of 2021". Time. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  20. ^ "Best Books 2021: Books We Love". NPR. Retrieved November 29, 2021.
  21. ^ "ESPN Films Announces 30 for 30 Documentary "American Son" on Tennis Player Michael Chang". ESPN (Press release). September 1, 2022. Retrieved January 4, 2024.
  22. ^ Faria, Zachary (May 18, 2023). "ESPN just spiked a documentary that would make China look bad". Retrieved January 4, 2024.
  23. ^ Rubin, Rebecca (April 18, 2023). "Tribeca Film Festival 2023: New Movies From Michael Shannon, Jacob Elordi and Chelsea Peretti to Premiere". Variety. Retrieved January 4, 2024.
  24. ^ Kang, Jay (February 8, 2012). "Super Bowl Araby". Grantland. ESPN Internet Ventures. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  25. ^ Kang, Jay Caspian (August 19, 2021). "Opinion | Want to Solve the Housing Crisis? Take Over Hotels". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
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