“Sunnyside” Up: Kal Penn’s New Immigration Comedy @kalpenn @NBCSunnyside

Kal Penn discusses his new NBC comedy series Sunnyside here, for the New York Times.

The show is centered on immigration, but not political, says Mr. Penn.

The premise seems timely in the Trump era, but “it was never meant to be a reaction to anything,” said Penn, 42, who started developing the series five years ago. “The topic of immigration goes back to the founding of our country. It is all of our stories.” “As long as we’re mindful of that,” he added, “I’m not going to take anybody’s bait.”

For more about immigration and pop culture, see the selected bibliography below.

Culture Across Borders: Mexican Immigration & Popular Culture (David R. Maciel and Maria Herrera-Sobek, eds., Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998).

Lara N. Dotson-Renta, Immigration, Popular Culture, and the Re-Routing of European Muslim Identity (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2012).

Madeleine Hron, Translating Pain: Immigrant Suffering in Literature and Culture (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009).

Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian-Americans in Popular Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999).

Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnik, Immigration and American Popular Culture: An Introduction (NY: NYU Press, 2007).