Sophia Chang, who calls herself the first Asian woman in hip-hop, entered the music industry in the late 1980s, landing gigs at record companies like Jive and Atlantic, and managing artists like Ol’ Dirty Bastard, RZA, GZA, Q-Tip, and D’Angelo. “Hip-hop embraced me, but Wu-Tang claimed me,” she says. “You know Wu Tang took this little Korean-Canadian woman and they went: She’s ours.” Chang’s new audiobook, The Baddest Bitch in the Room, details her life experiences, but unlike a traditional audiobook narrated by a single voice, it features two dozen guests, including Wu-Tang’s Method Man, RZA, and GZA, along with original musical scores. The title comes from Chang’s realization that as a woman of color in her 50s—one who raised two teenagers as a single mother, navigated an entrepreneurial career, and trained in Kung Fu for nearly 25 years—she is among a resilient group of women that has rejected societal pressure to stay invisible. “This is not exclusive to me and my friends,” says Chang. “Every woman has these qualities and what I hope that women are inspired to do by listening to my memoir is mine their power and see their beauty, because we are not taught to do this. It’s not only about possessing the aggregate of these qualities. It’s about claiming it and knowing it.” Chang radiates toughness and confidence. She is blunt and makes deep eye contact. Her fashion calling card is bright red lipstick, the only makeup she applies, and a signature black leather Gucci Fedora that covers the samurai haircut she’s maintained for more than two decades. She knows her appearance attracts attention, and that’s part of the point: Women of color “have been made to feel invisible. We are not invisible,” she says. “But that’s up to us. We can’t ask somebody else to make us visible. We make ourselves visible. I mean look at me—look my fucking hair... I have been invisible my whole life. But I do what I can to make myself seen.” Chang’s memoir recounts her improbable rise in the music business and fashion industries; how she rediscovered her Asian heritage and spirituality; and humorously recounts her foray into dating as a single mother. But the central message at the core of Baddest Bitch is visibility—her insistence to be seen, by extension, serving as an inspiration for other women to manifest that quality in themselves. Her friends have been pushing her to write a memoir for years. “I certainly wonder why it took me so long,” Chang says. “I think that part of that is that I’ve internalized the model minority myth. And I’ve internalized patriarchy and I’m internalized white supremacy…. and so I believe to some degree that my story wasn’t that special and then it wasn’t that important to tell.” She dismissed the idea until 2014, after Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, which preached a brand of corporate feminism Chang felt overlooked the realities of many women of color. It was around that time that Chang had begun mentoring young women as an executive at Universal Music Group. “I understood that my life experience, having worked so long in the music business in such a male-dominated industry–and particularly as a working mother—could be helpful,” she said. “[Lean In] was not written from our perspective, and it’s not really written for us,” Chang said. “So I decided I was inspired to write this book.” “I am simply asking the world to imagine that I exist,” she says. “I’m a 54-year-old Asian woman. I’m a single mother of two young adults who is out here raising hell, who is out here fighting for myself and for others, who is out here fucking with abandon. That’s fucking radical in my eyes.”
