I originally wrote this as a guest post for Angry Asian Man back in 2010. I rewrote it recently for Nerds of Color with some updates. I still have chosen to write more about The Walking Dead comic than the television series, primarily to avoid confusion.

It is appropriate that this is perhaps my last blog entry before I am devoured by the zombies.

It has been eight days since the tragic epidemic first swept through the world and turned most of humanity into the shuffling dead. I have taken refuge in a showroom model tool shed at the local hardware store. I left my small community of survivors to forage for supplies and became trapped here. I am surrounded by zombies, their moans for brains are louder than the tick-ticks of my fingers on the laptop keyboard. I am down to two cans of Lime Diet Shasta and a rapidly dwindling Ziploc bag of pepperoni minis for provisions. The katana I bought off of eBay during that period of my life I was obsessed with the film Ghost Dog has so far failed to live up to its pedigree and has been useless for opening up Hostess cake wrappers, let alone lopping off zombie heads. Note to self: if you survive this zombie apocalypse, buy a samurai sword that at least claims to be made in Japan.

My partner and child are safe. By fortuitous coincidence they were in Alaska when the outbreak hit, and as you know, Alaska is one of the few places on earth where the epidemic has not yet spread. They are safe in the fortified haven of Juneau and are experimenting to see if zombies can be distracted from their hunger for human brains by salmon, rich in Omega 3 Fatty Acids…

Continue reading “The Yellow Plague: Asian Americans in Zombie and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction”