Hellen Jo
⤏ IN CONVERSATION WITH HANNAH K. LEE
⤏ PHOTOS BY TOM’S ONE HOUR PHOTO | MAKE-UP BY KATIE MANN | STYLING BY SILKEN WEINBERG
⤏ ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2019
The first time I hung out with Hellen Jo, it was at this karaoke joint, and she had put on Gangnam Style. She nailed the lyrics, which were in rapid Korean, and scuttled across the floor, doing that dance from the music video with her wrists crossed, bobbing up and down. It was awesome.
By then I had long known her work in comics and illustration. Hellen’s images of young women feeling their feelings and fighting it out had captured my angst and the angst of many (Asian American women in particular). I had also become familiar with Hellen through her unfiltered interactions with fans. She would answer questions on anything from Asian American identity to what kind of brushes she used. Her sensitive, but acerbic tone becoming trademark.
It’s these seemingly opposing qualities that make Hellen special. Her drawings have blood, thorns, and rage, but also roses, tears, and vulnerability. The lettering in her work is spiked, but the images communicate friendship and camaraderie. She might sometimes look imposing, usually wearing all black, but she’s the best person to talk to at an art show opening about how bad the wine is. She won’t mince words when she’s telling you her opinions, but she also won’t hold back when she’s giving you compliments. And that is the greatness of Hellen Jo.
HANNAH/INTERVIEWER: There’s a thread of rebellion and angst in your work. It entices me as a former teen who was forced to go to Korean church and be a certain way that I really didn’t wanna be. What were you like as a teen?
HELLEN: I was too afraid of my parents to rebel in any meaningful way, so I went to church, I did orchestra, I went to SAT school, I always did my homework, I got pretty decent grades. But I was always super, super angry, and I didn’t really know why. I was always just mad at everything and everyone. I realized later in my twenties that I was just like a man-hating feminist, but I didn’t have the language to describe it. Not just a feminist but also I kind of hated the cultural norms of growing up in the Korean church, or growing up in a patriarchal Korean-American background. I didn’t have a language for it and I didn’t really understand what was so wrong about my circumstances. Like, I had a pretty comfortable childhood, but it didn’t make sense to me that I was so pissed all the time. [Hellen laughs] But now I realize I was mad because things were unfair. I didn’t like the kinds of expectations that were put upon me by my family, or by the people I was growing up with. I was always just so fucking mad. But I mean, I was a good and agreeable person on the outside, because I’m also a people-pleaser. I don’t like to let people down or make them feel hurt or make them feel like I’m opposed to them in the moment, it’s just that later on I’ll resent them really hard.
I: I want to ask about this post that you wrote which I cite often, I believe it was on Facebook, that really cut into the damaging effects of having the model minority myth hoisted onto you. When did you realize the model minority myth was fake?
H: I think I learned that it was fake as I was learning what it was. I’d heard the term model minority maybe in elementary school. But, you know, in elementary school it’s like, “What’s so bad about people thinking that we as a group are good citizens or whatever?”
I: It was a fucked up badge of honor.
H: Yeah, totally. But then, as I got older, I realized that it’s not even true. There are plenty of “bad Asians.” There are plenty of Asians who aren’t model minorities. I think I also realized that “model minorities” was a very classist term. That, “Oh, they’re all smart, they’re all doctors, and blah blah blah.” There are Asians in America in every class — from those experiencing homelessness to people who are very rich and powerful, and everyone in between. In high school I realized the idea of a model minority was really applied to me by a lot of my teachers. It made me really mad, and it made me really uncomfortable, because on one hand you’re trying to be a good student so you feel somewhat validated, but at the same time it’s like, “Oh, they’re kind of using me to make other kids feel bad.” Teachers would look at me as a model student and not realize that I was actually falling really far behind. In my junior and senior years, I should have had the worst grades, I wasn’t really doing my homework, I wasn’t studying, I would show up, but I wasn’t really absorbing anything, and I would just get A’s. I definitely didn’t deserve those grades, there were kids who actually understood the content, but they weren’t getting the same A’s because the teachers perceived them in a certain way — mostly based on their race.
I: Oh wow, that’s really fucked up.
H: It was really obvious to me. I think part of it was that I went to school with a lot of Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students and a lot of Latinos, and I was one of the few East Asian kids. I know that wasn’t the entire thing, but it felt like a really big thing and it felt really gross.
I: Yeah, I’m sure it did.
H: I felt really guilty about it. These people think they’re using this “model minority myth” to help me, but they’re just making it harder for everyone else. And it didn’t help me because I got to college and I was like so unprepared. They should have just let me fail. I feel like this unwillingness to let us fail is kind of a big part of Korean immigrant culture. I don’t know about other cultures . . .
I: Definitely.
H: Honestly something that I found really sobering in my mid-twenties was — and this is a really roundabout way to learn this lesson — but I played a show with the band I used to be in, Scrabble, and Margaret Cho happened to be there. Which was so random, but she’s like every fucked-up Korean American’s hero. I talked to her for a second and was like, “Oh my god, I love you so much, you’re fucking amazing.” Then she wrote a MySpace post about the show afterwards.
I: Amazing.
H: She was like, “It’s so awesome when Asian Americans take the things that are forced upon them, like music lessons, and made it something cool.” Because I was a cellist in the band, and she was like, “A lot of us are forced to play this music we don’t wanna fuckin’ play, but this girl took the cello and made it cool.” And then someone who was of Mexican heritage responded like, “I would have fucking loved to have had those lessons, I never got that privilege.” It was so sobering to see that like, “Oh, this is not a universal immigrant experience, this is very specific to us. Where other immigrants are like, “We’d fuckin’ kill for those kinds of opportunities.” That made me feel really bad, but I still think about it a lot. Like, “Man, if I had just learned how to be fucking normal and okay with being average.”
I: Do you see yourself as average?
H: No, not now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself as average. I’ve always thought that I was someone who had above average ability, but was squandering it. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ve really believed that for a lot of my adult life. It’s not a healthy way to think, regardless of if it’s true or not, but that’s just how I used to approach a lot of things. Like, I have this great ability, and so much luck, and lots of people notice my work, but I’m wasting it.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen myself as average. I’ve always thought that I was someone who had above average ability, but was squandering it.”
I: Speaking of how you are perceived, how do you go about managing the public facing aspect of the work that you do? How do you feel about your fans? I remember one of the first avenues through which I discovered your persona was through your Formspring [Hellen laughs] and I loved it so much, and I thought: here is this Korean American artist who is so candid and open and honest about a lot of things, a lot of angsty things I was going through at the time! this is a roundabout way of asking, how do you manage the public facing aspect of the work that you do?
H: Well, it’s changed since then. That was as I was starting to work in animation and no one knew I worked in animation. I’ve always been a blogger. As long as I’ve been putting art on the Internet, I’ve always been blogging along side of it, I really like writing and processing my thoughts and things in text form, and having people read it and comment on. I have always thought that, fundamentally, a good artist is sincere. A good artist is honest. I still believe that, but at that time I would say everything and anything I was thinking online, and it was fine, because mostly the other people reading it were just other young cartoonists around my age, all starting out. But then after working on Steven Universe, and other popular shows, the attention I got was really different. There was a lot of simmering anger, a lot of fan ownership. People would get so mad that you’re interfering with their favorite show. I got so much shit. I think some of it might have been deserved, but I think overall, it was pretty disproportionate to whatever I was contributing to Steven
Universe and to whatever shows that they were mad about. [Hellen chuckles] And it was so frustrating and super annoying and after that I was like, “Okay, everything I do is going to be private from now on.” I purged my Facebook friends list, I basically just stopped posting my deep personal thoughts online. I think I’ve realized that no one has the right to those thoughts. I can share them if I want, but people aren’t entitled to them just because they enjoy my art or hate my art. So nowadays I have a pretty strict boundary, if fans who like my work write to me, I’ll gladly receive their notes and I’ll respond to them.
I: Yeah, you’re very responsive.
H: I’m really glad that they like my work, and I’m glad they engage with it and connect to it. I mean, honestly, I think I’m still very vulnerable in my work.
I: I think so too.
H: And that’s all I care to show. My art is a true extension of my heart and my brain, and that’s extremely vulnerable. If you want actual personal facts about me, it’s like, that’s not vulnerability, that’s just fucking nosy.
I: Yeah, for sure.
H: So I don’t think I’m not vulnerable in public, I think I’m very, very vulnerable. I’m just not gonna share personal family vacation photos because it’s like, what does that have to do with my work? My work is the only thing I really wanna put online.
I: So you’re just being more intentional with how your vulnerability is manifested. What themes have you been exploring in your latest bodies of work?
H: Well, right now I’m working on a comic called Ttalgi.
I: Which means strawberry in Korean.
H: Yes! It’s kind of a return to my old-school coming-of-age comic days. It’s a comic about friendship, about betrayal, about misunderstandings between friends and the loss you can feel with friends when you don’t talk to each other. And there’s a little bit of supernatural horror shit in there, too, but I don’t wanna to spoil it!
I: That sounds so amazing. Does this take place in the same universe as Jin & Jam ?
H: Probably, I mean Jin & Jam takes place in a pretty real world, it’s not too fantastical or anything. I would say this comic takes place in a later period, because I tried to draw the characters in a way where they either dress like they’re in the ‘90s, or they dress like now where everyone’s dressed like they’re in the ‘90s. It’s kind of ambiguous. It’s more likely they’re in modern times, but it’s the same world. They’re still in California, they’re in Oakland actually.
I: Besides comics, what other forms do you see your work going?
H: I do a lot of painting. I like painting narrative scenes, but you kind of have to parse it out for yourself. I kind of go back and forth on whether I’d like to see my work animated . . .
I: Like have your own show?
H: Yeah, either have my own show, or a feature based on a comic, or something. The potential of that is so exciting, you can imagine just the most insane, awesome fucked up looking thing. But at the same time, having lived through the reality of working on an animated show, it’s so tedious, it’s so difficult. It’s really difficult when you’re a POC creator, it’s really difficult when you’re a woman. Do I really wanna go through all that just so I can have something that won’t even be a representation of the original piece? It’ll be its own separate thing which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t know if that’s what I’d want. I think for me, I’m more interested in making comics because I have complete control over that, like I can make a comic and be happy with how it came out and know that I made the story exactly as I intended.
I: It’s hard to reconcile all those things when your work is so personal.
H: Yeah, exactly. I make work that’s the stuff I wanna see made. It’s just stuff I wanna watch. But you know, a network isn’t interested in what one person wants. I’m not six billion viewers in China or whatever. It doesn’t matter to them, really, what I specifically want. It’s more like, “How can we make money off of this? How can we get as many people to watch this all the way to the end? How can we get them to engage with the content?” And the only way to reach, like, a truly broad audience is to make the work kind of mediocre. I mean, I know it’s possible to make stories that are meaningful to yourself into big movies. But I also know that it’s not very likely that whatever personal story you make will end up on screen.
“I have always thought that, fundamentally, a good artist is sincere. A good artist is honest.”
I: Yeah I see what you’re saying but I do also think that Hollywood is extra super hungry for Asian American narratives these days.
H: They are but a lot of those executives aren’t Asian themselves, so they want to see it conform to a version of Asian America that they believe is the truth but how could they possibly know?
I: But what if you could get your own funding and make it yourself?
H: Then I would fucking do it. Yeah, that would be awesome.
I: Well, okay last question. You’ve had quite an illustrious career even though it took a very unconventional path. From one bad Korean to another, do you have any words of wisdom for the Asian goths and punk kids and baddies?
H: Oh those Asian goths? [laughs] Yeah, I think my word of wisdom, my singular word of wisdom to all the Asian goths and bad kids is — don’t give in. Just keep doing the shit you really feel passionate about. As soon as you decide to make stuff because it’s profitable or because it’s popular, your insincerity will show. It’ll just make your work so much less good. Make work with the most authentic voice possible. That is what makes good work. I’m not saying that’s necessarily going to make you rich or successful ‘cuz in all likelihood it won’t, but it’ll make your work good and then you can die knowing you made good shit.
I: Yes. I love it. So ride or die for your integrity.
H: Yes, exactly. Perfect. That’s an even better way of saying what I said.
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⤏ HANNAH K. LEE (SHE/HER) CAME FROM TWO CHURCHGOING KOREAN IMMIGRANTS WHO SETTLED IN THE SUBURBS OF LOS ANGELES. SHE IS A IS A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY DESIGNER CURRENTLY BASED IN SAN FRANCISCO AND WORKING IN THE 9TH RING OF TECH. IN 2017, SHE PUBLISHED LANGUAGE BARRIER, A MONOGRAPH OF ZINES, COMICS, AND DRAWINGS, WITH KOYAMA PRESS. HER WORK HAS BEEN COLLECTED BY THE LIBRARIES OF THE MOMA, SF MOMA, AND THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.