Growing up, comic Atsuko Okatsuka felt like 'a freak' -

Comedian Atsuko Okatsuka is known for finding humor in the dysfunction of her immigrant family. Born in Taiwan to Japanese and Taiwanese parents, she traveled from Japan to Los Angeles with her grandmother and mother when she was 8 for what she thought was a short vacation. In fact, they were moving.

It would be years before Okatsuka saw her father again. She later described being "kidnapped" by her grandmother on a 2023 episode of This American Life .

"My grandma and I hadn't really talked about it in depth until [then]," she says. "And it helped that I got to do with Ira [Glass, host of This American Life ] and the thousands and thousands of thousands of listeners at the same time, then I'm really not alone."

Okatsuka grew up undocumented in the U.S., living in her uncle's garag