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The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) cordially invites you to the A. Magazine Reunion Celebration, an afternoon dedicated to the legacy of one of the most influential Asian American publications of the 1980s and ’90s, and the only one based in New York, where its leaders and staff were intimately involved with the city’s Asian American community and cultural landscape. This special event will feature a Panel Discussion from 3:30 to 4:30 PM with Jeff Yang (co-founder of A. Magazine: Inside Asian America) and Lakán Angelo Ragaza (managing editor and editor-in-chief), moderated by Herb Tam, MOCA’s Curator and Director of Exhibitions. Yang and Ragaza will share their experiences and challenges in launching and sustaining this culturally specific publication during the pre-internet era, when ethnic media served as a vital platform for representation and community building.

Following the discussion, a Reunion Reception from 4:30 to 6:00 PM will provide an opportunity for A. Magazine readers, collaborators, and community members to connect, share stories, and explore MOCA’s current special exhibition, Magazine Fever: Gen X Asian American Periodicals:

In the 1980s and ’90s, as Asian American identity transformed from a radical vision born of political agitation into a broadly recognized demographic, how did ethnic magazines reflect this new consciousness? Magazine Fever surveys a surge of Asian American magazine publishing during the multicultural era including A. Magazine, AsiAm, AsianWeek, Audrey, Giant Robot, Hyphen, Jade, KoreAm, Rice, Transpacific, YOLK, and others. Through magazine publishing, a vital form of mass media in the 1990s, Asian Americans editorialized issues central to their lives and depicted themselves in ways that were unimaginable before. Magazine Fever presents stories of Generation X magazines–how they were founded and sustained; how they captured the essence of multiculturalism and Generation X paradigms, and how they impacted the ways Asian American identity is understood today.

About A. Magazine

A. Magazine was created to trace “the emerging outlines of Asian America,” according to Jeff Yang, one of its founders. Yang took inspiration from Basement Workshop’s Bridge magazine and picked up editing experience working on East Wind, an Asian American campus publication at Harvard. For twelve years starting in 1991, A. Magazine was a consistent outlet of Asian American cultural reporting, editorial writing and entertainment features targeted to a young, educated readership of 2nd generation children of immigrants. With a national subscription base, placement in major newsstands like Barnes and Noble and Borders Books, a professional editorial staff, an emerging cohort of writing talent, and bi-monthly publishing, it was the pre-eminent media platform for Asian American life through the ’90s. The era’s top celebrities graced its covers, presenting a glossy image of defiant beauty and power, a subtle rebuke to the idea that Asian Americans should “melt into assimilation,” said its former editor Lakán Angelo Ragaza.

About Jeff Yang

Jeff Yang has been observing, exploring, and writing about the Asian American community for over thirty years. He launched one of the first Asian American national magazines, A. Magazine, in the late ‘Nineties and early 2000s, and now writes regularly for The Guardian, CNN, Slate, and elsewhere. He has written/edited three books—Jackie Chan’s New York Times bestselling memoir I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action; Once Upon a Time in China, a history of the cinemas of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Mainland; and Eastern Standard Time: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture, and most recently coauthored the New York Times bestselling RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now and THE GOLDEN SCREEN: The Movies That Made Asian America. He’s currently working with SK Global, Macro and Astral City on adapting RISE as an immersive documentary, collaborating with Renee Tajima-Peña on developing THE GOLDEN SCREEN as a PBS docuseries. His first movie as screenwriter, A GREAT DIVIDE, hits streaming platforms in November and the first season of the food journey show he developed and sold with my son Hudson hits NatGeo/Hulu/Disney+ in February 2025. He’s currently writing a reimagined Monkey King graphic novel for the new imprint THE LAB and working with screen legend James Hong on his forthcoming memoir, due out from Simon & Schuster in early 2026.

He lives in Los Angeles, CA, and is the father of two sons, the elder of whom, Hudson Yang, starred for six seasons on the groundbreaking ABC sitcom FRESH OFF THE BOAT.

About Lakán Angelo Ragaza

Lakán Angelo Ragaza was managing editor of A. Magazine from 1994 to 1996 and editor-in-chief from 1996 to 1998. He was also executive editor of Vibe Magazine. His writing has appeared in Vogue, The New York Times, Newsweek, W, and The Village Voice. He is also a photographer (he shot the Fall 2024 cover of Yes! Magazine) as well as a screenwriter, lyricist, and music arranger. He is currently developing a queer, English-language, pop-fusion update of the opera Carmen.