Wesley Yang

Wesley Yang is an American essayist and political commentator. He is currently a columnist for Tablet magazine and a contributor editor for Esquire . He hosts a blog and podcast called Year Zero.

Yang was born to Korean-American parents who were refugees from the Korean War and was raised in New Jersey.^[1] He studied history at Rutgers University.

Yang attracted mainstream attention in 2008 after publishing an article in n+1 about Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech shooting. He has since then written extensively about the experiences of Asian-Americans in American society.^[1]

Yang published his first book, The Souls of Yellow Folk, in 2018. A collection of his previously published essays, the book was selected as a notable book of the year by The New York Times Book Review and The Washington Post , and one of the best books of the year by The Spectator and Publishers Weekly . Yang coined the term "successor ideology" in 2019 to describe an emerging ideology among left-wing movements in the United States centered around identity politics. Yang opposes this ideology and believes it may replace traditional liberal values.^{[2] [3]}

In 2024, Yang withdrew from the lineup at a conference celebrating the 60th anniversary of Skidmore College's Salmagundi magazine after word spread on campus of his history of anti-transgender vitriol.^{[4] [5]}

Yang costarred as Wes in the 2008 Alex Karpovsky docufiction film Woodpecker .

• Year Zero, Yang's blog

• Living people
• 21st-century American male writers
• American columnists
• American writers of Korean descent
• American political commentators
• Rutgers University alumni
• Writers from New Jersey

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Year of birth missing (living people)