‘By Jessica Xiao, AsAmNews Contributor

Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster film ‘Sinners’ enters its second weekend and paints a picture of 1932 Mississippi that includes a nuanced picture of the inhabitants beyond Black and White. Coogler’s original screenplay juxtaposes supernatural horror with the sociological horror of life as a racialized person in 1932 post-Civil War southern United States. 

Twins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) return to their childhood home in Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta, after spending many years up north in Chicago, to open up a “juke joint,” informal nightclubs that functioned as a community space catering to Black folks mostly in segregated rural areas in the Deep South where blues music evolved.

Bo Chow (played by Malaysian actor Yao) and Grace Chow (played by Shanghai-born Chinese American Li Jun Li) are a couple who run two grocery stores in segregated post-emancipation Clarksdale, Mississippi, one catering to the Black community and one for White clientele. 

They have a daughter Lisa (played by Helena Hu) who helps run the store, a relatable character who may resonate with many first generation Asian Americans who have helped tend their parents’ service industry businesses.

Bo and Grace, portrayed as old friends with the twins, are invited to supply the new juke joint, after which a joyous and devastating sequence of events occur.  

Chinese-owned and operated groceries really did serve the Black community in the Mississippi Delta and held a unique position in US society. Chinese groceries were willing to sell to Black customers and to extend credit lines if they couldn’t pay immediately. “It was like a three-lane road — there were the Whites and the Blacks, and the Chinese,” said Frieda Quon, in the 2017 documentary “The Untold Story of America’s Southern Chinese,” which has been widely circulated again following the movie’s opening weekend.

The Chinese, seen as neither Black nor White, survived by filling economic roles that White folks did not want to do and that Black folks did not have access to. “We all stayed in our lanes and we were fine until we crossed over,” said Quon. 

The characters were roughly based on Quon’s family history as grocery store owners in Mississippi— Coogler contracted the documentary’s producer, Dolly Li, as a consultant on the film, inspired by his father-in-law who discovered he had Delta Chinese ancestors.

According to Li, the actors “meticulously studied” the accents of real Mississippi Delta Chinese folks interviewed in her documentary. 

Additionally, a defining scene of the movie that medleys Black American and African musical and dance traditions also included Bo and Grace’s heritage; Beijing opera and Sun Wukong, the mythical Monkey King character in one of China’s four great literary epics, both make an appearance. Yao, the actor who played Bo, shared with The Strait Times that he was asked by the creative team to propose cultural icons meaningful to the greater Asian diaspora — and it was by his suggestion that the film included Sun WuKong.

In a movie that honors traditions, diaspora, and interwoven histories, it is no surprise but nevertheless moving to see historically accurate Chinese American representation in the Jim Crow South. 

Oftentimes, East Asians are seen as more recent immigrants, with denser populations in metropolitan areas of the East and West Coast, but there exist Chinese communities many generations deep in the U.S. South.

This is a reminder not only for those outside of our communities, but for newer Asian Americans to know our own histories in this land — our legacies and struggles run deep, different from that of our Black, Indigenous, Brown, or White counterparts, but equally worthy of being shared and uplifted.

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