People often tell me that I remind them of Margaret Cho. There are similarities: I’m an Asian American female comedian with a dry sense of humor, a fondness for tattoos, and a proclivity toward impersonating my Asian mother in my stand-up, as Cho often does. I am in the beginning of my work as a comedian, but Cho became known in the ’90s as one of the handful of female stand-up comedians of color, and despite the years of tolerance and diversity-awareness since Cho began, a career as an Asian comedian remains, in the best cases, a niche—and in the worse cases, a ghetto.

Cho’s early success eventually led to the short-lived ABC sitcom All-American Girl. Executives quickly asked her to “tone down” her liberal comedy, thinking it too much for network television, and so the show was canceled and Cho returned to stand-up. In recent years, she has released music tinged with comedy but not overwhelmed by it. Her Grammy-nominated 2010 album, Cho Dependent, presented her collaborations with many of her favorite musicians, including Fiona Apple, Tegan and Sara, and Jon Brion.

Over the years, Cho’s comedic voice has also advocated social activism and self-worth. Her anger, bluntness, and fearlessness have won for her a leadership role among women and the LGBT community. Cho currently stars in the Lifetime television series Drop Dead Diva (a legal comedy/reincarnation fantasy now in its fifth season), and her current stand-up tour, “Mother,” heads to Europe this winter. I spoke with Cho in her hotel room at the New York Hilton on a humid June day.

—Anna Suzuki