Washington Post Corrects Photo Caption That Misidentifies Nearly All ‘Joy Luck Club’ Actresses

The paper issued a correction but did not apologize for the mistake

joy luck club 1993
Photo Credit: YouTube/Buena Vista Pictures

The Washington Post corrected a photo caption on Monday that misidentified nearly every actress in a photograph from the seminal 1993 film “The Joy Luck Club.”

The piece, “Why ‘The Joy Luck Club’ is the most interesting — and frustrating — addition to the National Film Registry this year,” featured Kieu Chinh, Ming-Na Wen, Tamlyn Tomita, Tsai Chin, France Nuyen, Lauren Tom, Lisa Lu and Rosalind Chao in a still taken from the film.

But when the piece was first published, the caption misidentified the actresses in order as Tamlyn Tomita, Rosalind Chao, Ming-Na Wen, Tsai Chin, Kieu Chinh, Lisa Lu, France Nuyen and Lauren Tom.

“‘From left,’ nearly every name is incorrect. Tsai Chin seems to be the only one they accidentally got right,” Phil Yu, who runs the Angry Asian Man Twitter account, tweeted on Monday alongside a screenshot of the original caption.

The Post corrected the mistake, saying, “An earlier version of this article included a photo caption that incorrectly identified the actresses in ‘The Joy Luck Club.’ The caption has been updated.”

This isn’t the first time actors and actresses of color have been misidentified in photo captions by media outlets. Last year, when the cast of “Crazy Rich Asians” appeared at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, both People and Vogue magazines misidentified the actors as other Asian actors who weren’t even in the film. That same year, Vogue misidentified journalist and activist Noor Tagouri, who appeared as a model in the February issue, as Pakistani actress Noor Bukhari.

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