Talking about the Timeliness of “The Good Asian” with writer, Pornsak Pichetshote

Pornsak Pichetshote is Thai-American who has a left a mark on both the comic and TV landscape. A former editor for Vertigo, Pornsak has since gone on to write Infidel for Image and episodes of Freeform’s Cloak & Dagger, among other acclaimed works. We had the chance to sit down and talk with him about his latest project: The Good Asian. BlackNerdProblems: I’m really excited to talk about this book. I loved it so much. Pornsak Pichetshote: Thank you thank you. It means a lot during this time where it hasn’t hit the world yet to hear that feedback. Thanks for being excited and wanting to talk.

BNP: First thing, in six words can you give the most distilled elevator pitch of your new comic, The Good Asian? PP: Okay, I thought about this. The closest I could get was seven. Chinatown Noir featuring America’s first illegal immigrant. I got to seven. That’s the best I could do. BNP: Okay, okay. We can work with that. And yeah, Chinatown Noir, all of these very exciting words to me personally. And when this book was first announced, you noted that several years of research went into writing this series. So, how do you start approaching the research? Do you have the idea first and then want to back it up, do you just sort of find something and go “oh, this is a story.” What does that process look like? PP: It’s a couple things simultaneously…So, I’m ethnically Chinese, but I self-identify as Thai-American and the reason for that is because in my house, whenever my parents argu…