- published: 03 Nov 2015
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Constance Tianming Wu (born 22 March 1982) is a Taiwanese American actress. Wu is known for her role as Jessica Huang in the ABC comedy series Fresh Off the Boat, for which she received critical acclaim and was nominated for the TCA and Critics' Choice Television awards.
Wu was born and raised in a Taiwanese family in Richmond, Virginia. She graduated from Douglas S. Freeman High School, where she began performing in local theater at Henrico Teen Theater, HATTheatre, Theatre IV, Virginia Shakespeare Festival as well as an NYU program for six months during high school at Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute.
Her parents emigrated from Taipei City, the capital of Taiwan. Wu said that her paternal grandparents were very poor, working as bamboo farmers and did not have the opportunity to get an education, so were unable to read and write. Her father was a biology and genetics teacher at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Wu graduated from State University of New York at Purchase's Conservatory of Theatre Arts with a BFA in Acting in 2005. One of the directors she adores most is Ang Lee, a Taiwanese who has won the Academy Award for Best Director twice. After college she studied psycholinguistics and almost attended a graduate degree program in speech pathology from Columbia University and her mother was a computer programmer. She has three sisters, two older and one younger.
The phrase 'fresh off the boat (FOB) is the term used to describe immigrants that have arrived from a foreign nation and have not yet assimilated into the host nation's culture, language, and behaviour, but still continue with their ethnic ideas and practices. Within some ethnic Asian circles in the United States, the phrase is considered politically incorrect and derogatory. It can also be used to describe the stereotypical behavior of new immigrants as, for example, their poor driving skills, that they are educated yet working low-skilled or unskilled jobs, and their use of broken English. The term originates in the early days of immigration, when people mostly migrated to other countries by ship. "Fresh off the Boeing" (in reference to the Boeing 747 jet) is sometimes used in the United States as a variation, especially amongst south and south-east Asian immigrants.
In the sociology of ethnicity, this term can be seen as an indicator of a nature of diasporic communities, or communities that have left their country of origin and migrated, usually permanently, to another country. The term has also been adapted by immigrants themselves or others in their community who see the differentiation as a source of pride, where they have retained their culture and have not lost it to assimilation. In fact, instead of taking this harm-intended phrase as an insult, many immigrants and more specifically, East and South Asians (especially their American-born children) may use this term to describe their cultural background habits and fashion sense, for example "fobby clothing", "fobby glasses", "fobby accent", and others.
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