‘It’s just really hard being a single mom and a female comedian,” Jiaoying Summers jokes in her recent Hulu stand-up special. “I am my own cock block.”
Summers insists that stand-up comedy doesn’t exist in her native China. But just six years after starting her career in the U.S., she has starred in a stand-up special for a major streaming service and opened her own comedy club in Hollywood
And she launched her first big international tour, named after that Hulu special, What Specie Are You?, which includes two stops at the San Jose Improv on Dec. 26 and 27.
“It’s about my jokes and what I think of the current environment, the cultural differences between the East and West, being a mom, dating, and my relationship with my mother,” Summers says. “It’s also about my takes on how bizarre racism is. Nationality, language and skin color don’t really matter. We are all in the end just people. We are just one race, the human race. And I just really wanted to bring us together with humor.”
Born in 1990 in Linzhou in China’s Henan province, Summers moved to America in 2009 and studied economics at the University of Kentucky before relocating to L.A. in 2013. She auditioned for film and TV roles, including a part on Rebel, the 2017 short-lived BET drama series executive produced by John Singleton.
Landing jobs in the entertainment industry was tough, but the late director told Summers he thought she was funny and encouraged her to pursue stand-up comedy. She started making the open-mic rounds in L.A. in 2019, but getting stage time also proved to be difficult. So a year later, she made the ballsy move to buy her own comedy club, The Hollywood Comedy, which hosts daily open-mics and various themed nights.
Since then, Summers has appeared in Netflix Is a Joke Festival’s Women of Comedy and became the first Chinese-American to headline the Apollo Theater. She collaborated with OnlyFans to host its first comedy special, LMAOF, with Matt Rife and other comics. And she’ll be taping a second special next year as part of her current tour. Summers is also working on developing a show based on her life, which she says will be similar to Modern Family and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Every young comedian’s success these days depends on social media, particularly TikTok, and Summers has amassed nearly 2 million followers. But in 2022, she was temporarily banned from the Chinese-owned app for joking about her personal experience surviving China’s former one-child policy, which, until 2016, limited the number of children families could have, and favored parents giving birth to sons over daughters.
“It was very frustrating because I never had a club to pass me around or had a comedian take me on the road to open for them,” Summers recalls. “I only had myself and this platform. TikTok was a big leverage for me, and when I lost it, it was really difficult for my career.”
Though she grew up without any comedic influences, Summers says she admires Joan Rivers, Nikki Glaser and Tom Segura, as well as Asian female comics who’ve broken Hollywood’s glass ceiling. Margaret Cho, for example, has appeared on her podcast, Tiger Mom with Jiaoying Summers, along with Patton Oswalt, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Macy Gray, Todd Barry, Annie Lederman, Yannis Pappas and other big-name guests.
“I think it’s very challenging to do anything in entertainment as a woman of color because sexism and racism exist,” Summers says. “I speak a language that gave me an accent, so I face more challenges because I don’t have the opportunity to portray an American girl. As women we are just going to have to work a hundred times harder than men to get the same thing, and being an Asian woman on top of it makes it extremely hard.
“It’s easier for men to sell shows,” she elaborates. “If you see a lineup at the Comedy Store, you always see there’s way more men. But instead of crying about it, you have to create opportunities. The key is to be better than anyone around you and better than your old self. We can rise to the position of power so we can uplift, influence and give our people a better opportunity than when we had it. And that’s what Margaret Cho did for me. Whenever I post a new project, she always shares it. Awkwafina has been very sweet, too. All those Asian female comics have worked hard to open the door to make it easier for us to walk through.”
Jiaoying Summers will do sets 7:30 and 9:45pm on Dec 26 and 7 & 9:30pm on Dec 27 at The Improv, 62 S Second St, San Jose. Tickets: $31.14+. improv.com/sanjose
