On the front of the greeting card is the pale face of a geisha, her eyes lowered in submission. The words “So Sorry” are drawn next to her puckered, crimson lips.

Flip it open and it reads: “But I’m not your geisha bitch!”

 

“I’m a believer that everything is political,” says Hae Yuon Kim, founder and owner of Chopsticks, Please (www.chopsticksplease.com), an online company that offers nearly 100 cards designed to reflect and represent Asian Americans. She designed this card to fight the perception of Asian women as geishas.

 

Along with stereotype-bashing themes, Kim’s cards cater to customs such as chut-tol, the celebratory feast that honors a Korean child’s first birthday. On this card, which is Kim’s best-selling, a dazed baby in traditional garb is besieged by flash photography.

 

When Kim became an aunt in 1995, a chut-tol card such as this was nonexistent, and books or gifts rarely featured Asian faces. “Whenever there was a product with an Asian child depicted, I would get really excited because it was something that I could give to my niece,” says Kim, 45. “When you go to the store to buy a birthday card, you don’t want to buy one that has a white kid on it. Because then, what kind of message are we sending?”

 

There are roughly 3,000 greeting card publishers in the country, and the estimated 7 billion cards that are purchased annually generate $7.5 billion in retail sales, according to the Greeting Card Association in Washington, D.C. Yet Kim felt the industry didn’t serve the 13 million Asians living in the United States.

 

In 2005, she launched Chopsticks, Please to fill this void. “This is about making a group of underrepresented people have a sense of belonging.”

 

For Kim, her company’s moniker is an expression that asserts her identity and preference. When she was 6, her family moved from Seoul to Hinsdale, a predominately white Chicago suburb. “I stuck out like a sore thumb,” she recalls. The only Chinese restaurant in town “had really great pot stickers and egg rolls,” but the tables were set with knives and forks for the mostly Caucasian clientele. “I always had to ask, ‘Can I have some chopsticks, please?’”

 

Now living in Oakland, Calif. Kim works as a graphic designer and creates her line with more than a dozen artists and photographers, including Michael Wertz, who illustrated a set of cards featuring the animals of the Chinese zodiac. With the goal to primarily target tykes and tots, Kim has devised cards with messages such as “Eat your mama’s kim chee,” along with a category for mix-raced youth. “I want my son to know that there are other kids who look like him,” says Kim, whose 6-year-old son is Korean and Caucasian. “My cards tell children that they’re great just the way they are.”