Daily Trojan, October 3, 1994
Finding Asian-Americans in mainstream entertainment is often difficult, and capturing their unique cultural diversity is even harder. USC graduate Tommy Tam is attempting to do that with a new magazine named Yolk.
Tam, who graduated in 1991, is the Chief Operations Manager of Yolk. He first conceived the idea of a magazine aimed at the concerns of the Asian-American population three years ago while still in school.
“At USC I saw the lack of Asian-American images in general,” Tam said. “The idea (for an Asian America magazine) was always there but I didn’t exactly know how to do it.”
In November, 1993, Tam began to realize his idea, coordinating writers, photographers, editor and a full staff.
The final result debuted last month as Yolk, a magazine geared toward “The New GenerAsian,” as his cover boasts.
The name Yolk was created by Larry J. Tazuma, managing editor of the magazine. He said the reason for the name is simple-Yolk represents the color of Asian-American skin, yellow.
“If you think about it, our skin color is really the only thing that connects Asians with other Asian and Asian-Americans….Yolk, above all else, stands for the belief that `Yellow is Beautiful,'” Tazuma explained in an article in the premiere edition.
The name of the magazine, however, has not gone without criticism.
People seem to get some kind of reaction right away, whether it’s good or bad. I’ve had both, “explained Tazuma. “One person in particular wrote a letter saying she was Filipino and that the yellow did not represent her race-She considers herself brown.”
Yolk is not the first magazine of its kind. In fact, Asian American magazines date back to the 1970’s and concerns dealing with an ethnically mixed Asian audience existed then as well.
“Reflecting all Asians was hard to do because there’s so many,” said Gerald Jann, founder of Jade magazine, one of the first Asian American magazines. “To do that you’d have such a magazine that would be so scattered ethnically that you wouldn’t reach any one sector. “Though we use the label Asian American, there is not as great of a crossover between the ethnic groups as we’d like to think….in many cases it isn’t as strong as we think it is because of language, culture and geographical location,” Jann said.
The staff at Yolk reflects the diversity in the Asian community with people of Japanese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean descent, among others, Tazuma said.
“The staff will always be mixed,” Tazuma said.
He also added that topics covered may target one community more than others from issue to issue, but there will be an effort for overall balance.
Yolk’s target audience is young, college-educated, English speaking Asian Americans, although it also hopes to attract a non-Asian audience. Non-Asian models are featured in the magazine and many articles deal with topics that cut across the mainstream community.
“We’re looking for things that are topical, things that anybody…not just one particular sector of the Asian population would be interested in.” Tazuma said. “And we’re aiming more towards a mainstream feel.”
“The staff here has a lot of friends that are not Asian and we feel that’s a part of our lives and that’s a part of Asian American lives too. A lot of us don’t live in a purely Asian world. We feel this is a true representation of what we go through,” he said.
Yolk is currently available in approximately 300 newsstands and bookstores in the Los Angeles and San Diego area.
Tam said he is proud of his first edition and optimistic about the magazine’s future.
“Overall, we actually produced something better than we expected,” Tam said. “The key is support from the community, support from advertisers. If that happens, I see a good future.
“I asked Jann, if he had known how hard it was to do a magazine, would he have done it again,” Tam recalled. “He said yes and that offered some inspiration. This is something I can do for the rest of my life.”