“The singing is stand-up, too,” says Cho, who describes her guitar skills as pretty basic. “I’m just trying to find a new way to tell jokes. And it’s fun.”

Cho might even perform her Miley Cyrus song, which she wrote recently after seeing a photo on the Internet of the “Hannah Montana” star pulling her eyes into tiny slits.

“It was this picture of Miley standing behind an Asian guy, her and her friends, and they were making chinky eyes. That’s a racial slur,” says Cho, who translated her anger into lyrics that include this verse:

“All you have to do is pull at your face/to make your eyelids resemble our race/This kind of joke has no proper place/Miley Cyrus is a disgrace!”

Says Cho, “The song isn’t necessarily about her, it’s about how there really is a very big problem with people thinking they can make racial slurs against Asians and there are no repercussions. If you make fun of any other ethnic group, there is hell to pay.” Cho — who in October was named “Korean of the Year” by a leading Korean-American newspaper — has done her best to address issues like racism, sexism, homophobia and body image in her stand-up act. She also brought the first Asian-American family to prime-time television in 1994 with her ABC sitcom “All-American Girl.”

In the decade and a half since then, prime time has added many more Asian-American characters, especially to ensemble casts, such as “Grey’s Anatomy” (Dr. Yang), “Lost” (Jin and Sun) and “The Mentalist” (Detective Kimball Cho). Asked if she detects some stereotyping in these depictions, Cho says, “I welcome stereotypes, because at least we’re visible. Anytime we’re on, it’s better than being invisible.”

She’ll soon raise Asian-Americans’ TV profile higher when she starts working on Lifetime’s “Drop Dead Diva,” a “comedic drama” that Cho has been told will debut in June.

“It’s about this really thin blond young beautiful model who dies and is reincarnated in the body of an overweight woman,” says Cho, who plays the loyal assistant to the latter (Brooke Elliott), a plus-size attorney. “Oh, my God, it’s all about body image, how we view ourselves and how that affects our self-esteem. I’ve always had a lot of issues around weight. I’ve always talked about it. People can really understand and relate to it.”

Branching out

And what about VH1’s “The Cho Show,” which aired last fall? Cho says it won’t be back on VH-1, but she’d like to “do something” with it elsewhere.

“I really like doing reality,” she says.

Her real parents, whom she has often riffed on in her act — Cho’s impersonation of her Korean-born mother has always been hilarious — also appeared in “The Cho Show.” And they came to “love” being on camera, Cho says.

“They said no initially when I asked them to do the show, and they kept saying no. I just kept giving the schedules and the call times,” Cho says, chuckling. “They’d say, ‘No.’ I’d say, ‘OK, just show up here and be in hair and makeup.’ I never let them out of it.”

Born and raised in San Francisco, Cho, who turned 40 in December, started performing stand-up at age 16 in a comedy club above a bookstore her parents ran. Not long after, she won a contest whose first prize was opening for Jerry Seinfeld.

Despite her many years as a comedy star, and all her rave reviews, it’s only recently — thanks in large measure to Tina Fey and the attention paid her — that all of America seems to have finally gotten the message: Women are a very funny breed.

“The most popular comics right now are women. That’s really exciting. I feel that will encourage more women to get into comedy,” Cho says. “I’ve always preferred female comics. My taste, what I laugh at, I just have always been a fan.”

At the show in Englewood, Cho plans to riff on “a lot of sex things,” which are “really fun to talk about,” she says.

And then there are those songs — which potentially include the one whose lyrics Cho posted on her blog last month, under the heading “Oh Miley.” She hopes it will raise not only the young Disney Channel star’s consciousness, but that of Asian-Americans as well.

“We don’t always stand up for our rights. I’m kind of asking the Asian-American community to be more defensive,” Cho says. “What we need is our own defamation league.”