It’s odd, really. I remember fairly little about her character from the show, but ER remains the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Ming-Na. And I even like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. There’s just something about her, I guess. Though I think many of my friends from high school think of her from The Joy Luck Club, since a bunch of them went and saw it together and talked for days about how it related to their own immigrant experience.

I grant you, she’s a bit younger than most of the people we discuss here, at only 53. On the other hand, I feel as though she merits more attention than she tends to get. It’s also true that 53 is generally old for an actress; there aren’t a lot of roles for middle aged women, especially not on the older end of middle aged and especially not for actresses of color. In fact, I feel as though she has had considerably fewer opportunities than other women of her ability.

This is one place where Marvel is handling their Diversity Problem pretty well, actually. Whether you like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or not, the fact remains that they cast a middle aged Asian woman in a role. And she’s neither a martial arts expert nor a bookish mentor type. Yes, okay, she does excel at hand-to-hand combat, but Melinda May is just generally tough. She’s a good agent, and it isn’t limited to zen koans or whatever. Or at least, that was true as far through the series as I’ve gotten; I need to catch up at some point.

Something else that occurs to me as I look over her IMDb page is that, unlike many other Asian actors, she has mostly played characters of her own ethnicity rather than the typical “you’re Chinese; that’s close enough.” Her characters tend to have names like Wen and Mei and Chen—Chinese names. Okay, so she was born in Macau, but her parents were from Suzhou, which, if I’m reading this right, is about an hour, hour and a half northwest of Shanghai. She was in Joy Luck Club but not Memoirs of a Geisha, is basically what I’m pointing out, here.

And, of course, she’s Mulan, making her the first Disney Princess we’ve covered for this column. She even recently reprised the role for Sofia the First, a show I feel a nice rant building up about, and her daughter is a recurring character on it. It’s a little disheartening to know that it’s how she’s most likely to be remembered. It’s not that I dislike Mulan, but it’s not the best thing she’s done nor the best thing she’s capable of doing. It is what it is, kind of like much of her career.