SOPHIA CHANG: If you ask Asians in the creatie

if their parents can describe what they do,

no.

What does that mean to manage a?

The gift that hip-hop gave me ws

expressing myself in a way that was... raw.

Wu-Tang helped give voice to my.

[crowd shouting]

♪

I am now an author.

I wrote a book.

My story speaks to the world.

ALL: Woo!

SOPHIA: But the people that I most wanna impact

are women of color.

What I am doing with any of thes that I'm telling my story

is cracking open the world's imn

on what an Asian woman can be,

what a single mother can be,

what a middle-aged woman can be.

My daily existence is an act of.

CARLOS WATSON: The most extraordinary lives

follow undefined paths.

To find your voice,

you may need to journey into the unknown.

I'm Carlos Watson, editor of OZY,

and these are "Defining Moments"

♪ instrumental music ♪

♪

- Hey.

Do I get a hug or a shake?

SOPHIA: [laughs] You get a hug.

- Nice to meet you. - Hello, Mr. Watson.

Nice to meet you too. - Thank you for having me in yo.

- Thank you for coming. - Yeah.

- This is an Asian household, so you have to take off your sh.

I don't, though. - Oh, you don't but I do?

- Yeah, kind of, that's how it ,

because mine are clean, and I'm, and I get to keep my shoes on.

- You know what, your house, yo-

- Thank you. My rules. I apprec.

- That's great.

Hi. Thank you for having me her.

- I'm so excited that you're he.

- Um... you're not a New Yorker.

- I'm not. I'm, I'm from Vancour

but smash cut into New York.

♪

Hip-hop was kinda my first introduction to it.

CARLOS: What would have happened if you had not gone into hip-ho?

SOPHIA: Oh, I don't think I woue the same woman I am today.

If it wasn't for Wu-Tang, I wouldn't have the kids I have.

I simply don't know what my life would have looked like

had I not gone into hip-hop.

♪

I was born and raised in Vancou.

Child of Korean immigrants.

My mother escaped North Korea.

She left behind siblings and he. She never saw them again.

And she met my father at the University of Seoul.

They got married, and they came to Vancouver

probably in '64, and I was born.

Where I grew up was almost exclusively white,

so I faced lots of overt racism.

I got called chink, I got calle,

I got called gook.

HEESOK CHANG: My sister put a lot of energies

into wanting to be assimilated,

especially I think in the high school years.

SOPHIA: Every image I see of bey and power and sex appeal

is whiteness.

I was ashamed of being Asian fot just a little bit, but for a lo.

When I had to talk about my parents' names,

that was embarrassing.

Listening to my parents talk with heavy accents was embarras.

When people came over and they smelled our food,

it was embarrassing.

HEESOK: There was a period when she, uh,

I think was kind of reacting against family traditions,

sitting down at, uh, the table ,

which was very important for myy and eating Korean food.

Sometimes my sister would see what my mom had cooked

and she would make herself a grilled cheese sandwich.

It created a lot of tension bet,

her and my father.

SOPHIA: I was always defiant.

I was angry.

And hip-hop showed me

how to fine-tune that anger and.

The first time I heard Grandmaster Flash and the Furio,

the first time I heard The Mess,

it was such a light bulb moment.

- ♪ It's like a jungle sometime♪

♪ It makes me wonder how I keep from going under ♪

- In retrospect, I believe

that the reason that it resonatd with me so deeply

is because... it was

people of color taking control of their own narrative.

CARLOS: How old were you? - I was 17.

♪

- I do remember her being very d

when she first discovered hip-h,

and I could tell that it was moe than the music.

SOPHIA: If you're the child of , most of us were raised

to take safe jobs.

My father, God rest his soul, a math professor.

My mother, a librarian.

My brother is now a tenured English professor at Vassar.

There's no doubt that I was supposed to be an academic.

There was nothing academic that really stimulated me.

Hip-hop just opened my eyes, like, oh my God.

I was so anxious to get to New k that I skipped

my graduation from University.

University of British Columbia is where my father taught,

it's where my mother worked, it's where my brother graduated.

And then their daughter's like, nyeh, I'm just gonna go.

That was probably really disappointing for my par.

CARLOS: Unhappy with the future her parents prescribed for her,

Sophia rejected her native cult,

and would forge her own path

motivated by the need to create her own identity.

♪ hip-hop music ♪

HEESOK: My sister lived in a tit right above the subway.

- I just fell into the scene, I got ensconced,

and it was just

this world that was so

new and vibrant.

♪

- I was in graduate school, and she would make me hip-hop t,

and they were, uh, they were fa.

Big Daddy Kane, EPMD,

Public Enemy, Leaders Of The Ne.

SOPHIA: This is a letter that I sent to my brother

on June 8th, 1988.

"Not much to write, but here are the tapes I promised so long ag.

"I started writing a song-by-sos

"of the hip-hop tape, but that will take me a while th

so it's forthcoming."

♪ soft music ♪

HEESOK: So I used to visit my sister, uh, fairly often,

and she took us to, uh, these cs that were playing hip-hop music.

She was in the eye of the storm.

SOPHIA: There were these three promoter.

They had this brilliant idea to have clubs,

and they named them after choco.

Payday is the one that I remember the most.

There was also 100 Grand Bar. There was Mars Bar, I think.

And they would move from spot t.

Like, I remember one I'm prettye was at a Ukrainian hall.

One was at a deserted Chinese r,

and it was just such a sense of.

There was no social media.

There were no cell phones, so wd just get the flyer and call eac,

oh my God, it's gonna be here, it's gonna be there.

It was like going on, like, a wild goose chase. It was awes.

One of the people that I met in New York was Sean Carasov,

this surly Brit who was doing A&R Jive in New York,

and he was moving to LA.

And he said, "Sophie,

[in English accent] I think youd come and interview for my job."

[in normal voice] And I was like, "Really? Wow, o"

I went and I interviewed with Bs who was the president of Jive,

and he told me later, he said, "The minute you walked in the d,

I knew that you wouldn't get th"

I'm sure Barry had doubts aboute because I'm a woman,

I'm Asian, I'm Canadian,

but after an hour and a half of, he gave me the job

and I asked him recently, I sai, "Barry, why did you give me the"

And he said, "Because you were . deeply embedded in the scene

that I knew that you would be a good scout."

Rico Wade and Ray Murray, two of the guys in Organized No.

CeeLo... 40...

Gipp, Joe.

Historic.

♪

MICHAEL OSTIN: I had the good fe of meeting Sophia

through some, uh, mutual collea,

and I was taken with Sophia imm.

She's such a... incredible force of nature.

I mean, there's no doubt Sophia was a fish out of water.

I mean, hip-hop and that world was misogynist

but she just was super-enthusia,

uh, very knowledgeable, and she was fearless.

- Were you the only Asian--

- I was the first. I was the first Asian woman.

There were other Asian men and women that came after me

but '87,

they're not like I was in there and not working.

So were there other Asians in the clubs? For sure.

But I actually had a formal posn as an A&R person,

which was pretty striking.

When I was at Jive, I did A&R which means I'm the talent scou,

and it means that you're getting a whole bunch of demo tapes

and you're listening to them,

and a lot of them are garbage.

And the Wu-Tang demo, three songs.

Protect Ya Neck, Tearz, and Met.

I remember putting it on and gog

"Wow!

What is this?" There were nine .

Nine MCs. I mean, that's crazy.

That didn't really exist like t.

So there's no way Jive would si.

Loud ended up signing them, but I was still so excited.

I was a Wu evangelist.

I was playing that shit for any. I was like, "Listen to this!"

I knew that I wanted to meet RZ.

I knew that he was the brains b.

And I got a meeting with him and it was the summer of '93.

He was gangly and taller than I'd expected.

He greeted me with--

RZA: Hey, Soph.

SOPHIA: We went down the streete to Lox Around the Clock for lun.

I then grilled him with questios about the Clan.

He told me that most of them had met in Staten Island,

which they called "Shaolin."

RZA had a unique worldview and clear vision for the group.

When we parted, I thought,

that's one of the smartest mother [no audio] I've ever met.

As I walked north on 6th Avenue wondering when we'd next meet,

he called out-- RZA: Yo, Soph.

SOPHIA: I turned quickly. RZA: Next time, lunch is on me.

- And immediately, they take me.

You know, "Come here, Soph. You're with us now."

I went to the studio and I had met Method Man

and he rushes me into the backrm and he says,

"Sophie, Sophie, you gotta come. You gotta watch my,

"you gotta watch my video.

I, I just got back the video for Method Man."

And he shows me the video and sitting across from me

and watching me is this guy,

and when the video's finished, ,

"Where are you from?"

Now, any person of color can tet

that's rarely a question, it's a statement.

It's saying

who the [no audio] do you think?

'Cause you don't belong here.

Before I could answer, Method just flew in between us

and he yelled,

"That's Sophie Chang, and she's down with Wu-Tang.

Never disrespect her again."

On the one hand, I'm getting,

"You don't belong here. This isn't for you."

But the flipside of that is hern

saying to him, "This is for her.

"This is her home.

She is our family."

Growing up as a yellow girl in a white world

wanting to be white,