Stand Up, Yumi Chung!

Yumi is a lanky 11-year-old Korean American girl who lives with her parents in Los Angeles’ Koreatown neighborhood. She frequently suffers from an inferiority complex related to her overachieving sister Yuri. Although Yumi is strongly motivated to study hard and please her parents, she hates the upscale middle school she is forced to attend. Secretly, she longs to become a stand-up comedian and keeps a secret journal of the comedy routines she invents.

While Yumi’s parents love her and want the best for her, they frequently ignore her needs and desires. When an opportunity presents itself for her to attend a comedy camp, she lies to get into the program. This deception leads to a string of lies that Yumi must fabricate to protect her secret identity from her parents and her real identity from her comedy camp friends.

In addition to the external pressures being placed on her by her family, Yumi also places enormous pressure on herself to succeed, both as a student and a comedian. She is easily crushed when she fails to succeed at either endeavor. Ultimately, Yumi learns that trying and failing are all part of life, and she begins to forgive herself for her mistakes.