Awkwafina has honored her great grandfather to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Awkwafina is celebrating Thanksgiving by honoring her great-grandpa who lived through the Chinese Exclusion Act.
In a post on Instagram, the Crazy Rich Asians star shared a picture of the thanksgiving menu from a restaurant founded by her great grandfather Jimmy Lum.
“[Lum] came to the US in the 1940s through a loophole in the Chinese Exclusion Act,” Awkwafina writes in the post. “He slept on concrete floors and worked in kitchens and laundromats from the Bronx to Manhattan, without a penny to his name.”
“But by what can only be described as the dankest hustle mentality ever, my great-grandpa managed to open his own restaurant: the first and most well-known Chinese-American joint in the five boroughs.”
Awkwafina added that his legacy still lives on. “To this day, I meet people who remember Lum’s, and it makes me proud that his legacy is still remembered.”
Although the Asian American comedian doesn’t support the historical context of Thanksgiving, she is using the holiday to thank him.
“Thanksgiving (while historically and politically kind of fucked up…) is an American tradition and an amazing excuse to eat a Christmas ham and drink Mikes hard lemonade,” she wrote. “But this year, I wanted to give thanks to my great-grandpa, a true self-made man who beat out the odds. Thank you for bringing us to New York City.”
In related news, Awkwafina discussed her character in the Crazy Rich Asians sequel, saying that Peik Lin “needs a man.”
