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Tara Tan: “I really admire strong women”

Softspoken with a refreshing sense of humour, Tara Tan is a junior who studies acting in the Atlantic Acting School, a studio within Tisch. We met up in Gramercy and chatted about her mixed Thai/Chinese-Singaporean background, the vast world of acting studios and theatre (something I personally know nothing about), and the strong women in her life that she looks up to. -Amy 

Hi, my name’s Tara Tan. I’m originally from Singapore, that’s where I grew up, but I was born in Bangkok. I’m mixed race - I’m half Chinese-Singaporean and half Thai.

I started out in freshman year doing liberal arts, but in my sophomore year I transferred into Tisch for drama cause I really missed it. I specialise in acting. I came from an arts background, I went to an arts high school in Singapore, and it just feels like something that I’m familiar and comfortable with.

Do you find that there are a lot of Asian people in acting?

No… well, I think in recent years there’s been a growing number in the States, but in Tisch… I mean there are a few but obviously not a lot. In my class, my studio, I am one of only two Asian girls in my grade. (Amy: How big is the studio?) In my year there are about maybe 75 people.

How did you get into drama and acting?

I think when I was young I just liked to mess around and just play make belief. I was a very obnoxious child so I would be very yappy and sing a lot, and dress up a lot, as like a character, and I liked to host little mini plays in my room and invite my parents and grandparents. I watched a lot of TV and I was like, oh I wanna do that, that seems fun.

So my Mom, picking up on my interest, she signed me up for drama classes when I was seven, so I did that on the weekends, just for fun. And then in 2008 Singapore opened its first pre-tertiary arts school. Pre-tertiary is like high school. So my parents helped me audition for that. I didn’t really know what was going on. I got in and spent my high school years there, my growing up years there, and I was just really immersed in theatre.

So your parents always supported you?

They always encouraged me to do what made me happy, they’re really supportive. I think they believe that if I do what I like then I will be happy and find success in that, rather than dreading what I do.

What was it like growing up mixed-race in Singapore?

I always felt like I relished in the idea of being mixed-race. I was really proud of it. I guess it made me feel unique and special and that I had two homes. Because I didn’t live in Thailand I really yearned to know more about that culture. So there was a point in time where I was really into Thai culture - listening to Thai music, and movies, and yeah, I just really wanted to get a hold of both my cultures.

Do you feel a strong connection to Thai culture?

Yeah, I really do. Cause my Mom and I are really close, and I feel like connecting with that part of me brings me closer to my Mom, and it is a strong part of who I am.

Do you speak Thai?

Mhm! Not too well, but fluent enough.

What about your Singaporean Chinese side?

Singaporean Chinese side... I speak English at home with my Dad. We’re not very Chinese Chinese. Sometimes I feel like I’m not as in touch with my Chinese side because being Chinese from China is really different from being Chinese in Singapore. 

Singapore is a melting pot of places, a bit like New York City. It’s very progressive. So I would feel like my family values - some of it is Chinese, and some of it is very Western, too. I feel like my Chinese side is like a hybrid Chinese, like a Singaporean Chinese.

In New York and at NYU do you find yourself in a Thai community, or a Singaporean community, or an Asian community?

I mix myself in all of those social groups. I have Thai friends that I hang out with, and I also go to Singaporean events. I have Singaporean friends that I hang out with. But funnily enough, my main group of friends are Asian but they’re Asian American.

Do you find that your experience is very different from theirs?

Yeah, it really is. Different in the sense that I did not grow up in America and a lot of them are first gen American, and I mean, I can empathise with their stories, but I don’t think it’s something that I’ve experienced. I never experienced that struggle of maybe not having parents that can speak English as well as me, you know?

What’s a daily schedule like for you in Tisch?

Studio is like three days a week, from 8:30am to 6:30pm. But sometimes it ends earlier, sometimes we start at like 10:00 and end at like 4:30, but it’s a significant amount of your day and time - and effort. And sometimes you have to rehearse on the weekends too, and outside of class, so it sucks up a lot of your life (laughs).

When you audition for Tisch, I have a theory that it’s like the Harry Potter sorting hat. 

Based on your audition they see which studio you best fit in. And there are a bunch of them. There’s like Experimental Theatre Wing, which is like more physical theatre-based, very exciting, and then there’s the Meisner Acting School, and mine, Atlantic, where they have different techniques and approaches.

Is it like the same thing everyday, or do you work on a production at a time, or...?

So in my first year at Atlantic, they didn’t let us perform in a production for the public. So we spent the whole entire year just training and getting the technique in our bodies. But in the second year, they do have showcases and productions. Usually we work on scenes in class for weeks and weeks, showcase it in class, and then we get feedback, and then we go back and work on it. So that’s like, our main projects. But this semester my main project was - we were given a play to work on, and we’re supposed to select texts, extracts from a play, and perform a throughline in class.

Do you do plays mostly, or musical theatre, or…?

Not musical theatre cause my studio doesn’t specialise in that. Mostly straight plays, but last semester I took a film class within my studio and we could only select scenes from films.

What do you prefer?

I’m definitely definitely more comfortable with theatre. But I’m really really interested in film as well.

Do you go out to a lot of auditions?

Mainly the ones within Tisch. But there are a lot of auditions in the city, too. There are like online platforms for actors that you can check out. There’s one called Backstage, which a lot of my friends are on.

After graduation, do you see yourself staying in the city?

Yeah, I really really wanna stay in the city and find work.

What’s your dream job or production?

I definitely wanna do something creative, and even if I don’t end up acting or in theatre, that’s fine with me, because what I learned at art school and acting school is really valuable. I would love to join a theatre company, or like an arts institution of sorts, and just start from there. Yeah. But definitely something creative.

Since you grew up in Singapore, you probably grew up seeing a lot of Asian faces in the media. How has that changed for you in New York, in the States?

That’s funny, I didn’t really watch a lot of Singaporean TV. Like actually, the TV that I saw was what I see now, in America. That hasn’t changed. Western media, American media is far reaching. I mean, I would see Asian-American faces pop up on my TV screen, but I don’t think much has changed. I do see that there is a call for more diversity, for sure, and more visibility for these ethnicities and races because their stories matter and they do exist, you know, like we’ve been here forever. So shows like Fresh Off the Boat, that was something I was not familiar with back home in Singapore.

What are your thoughts on that book, “Crazy Rich Asians,” that’s being turned into a movie?

I think that it’s a step in the right direction. I see on Facebook that people seem really excited about it, but people are also really mixed about it. Like, they’re talking about how it might not actually be that progressive, they’re still portraying stereotypes on TV. But I think it’s something exciting, and I think we just need to not be so judgemental all the time and just celebrate that we’re having an all-Asian Hollywood movie, like that’s something to be excited about. And if it’s something that doesn’t please you when you watch it, then new art’s gonna come out, something better. You can always build upon what has already been brought to the table.

Do you have any role models or influences?

I’m actually mostly influenced by the people around me, like people I know personally. I’m really influenced by my female friends, my Mother, my aunt, and I really admire strong women.

To you, what’s a strong woman?

A woman who knows how to have fun, is put together, but is mindful and wise and doesn’t let life get her down, or anything get her down. 

She lives for her own values, and she does what is right, not because a man tells her to do something. A woman who can be alone and be happy, but she can have a guy if she wants, or a girl, it doesn’t matter. 

Yeah, that’s a strong woman (laughs).

You can reach Tara by email at taratanjm(@)gmail.com or find her on Facebook. 

Interview by Amy Ni.

[lunar-stories-blog]

Filipinx Faces, Bodies, and Voices: Shalemar Coloma

I first came across Shalemar Coloma’s documentary work at “Reclaiming the Past and Rallying the Present,” an A/P/A BRIDGE (Asian/Pacific/Americans Building Relationships to Inspire Diversity, Growth, and Empowerment) activism installation held in April. A sophomore at Tisch, Shalemar has been exploring intersectional identity through her filmmaking. (She also wears an amazing hot pink fur coat that I want to cop.) Because it was finals week, we met Shalemar in the lobby of Bobst, where we were lying on one of the black couches, staring up into the abyss of failed hopes and dreams, to talk about London Tipton, being Filipinx, and her recent work. -Elaine

What's your name and what do you do?

My name’s Shalemar Coloma. I go to Tisch for film, and I guess I consider myself a filmmaker.

Wait, can I just say I was really confused because I was looking at your Instagram (@shlemarcolofe) and your name was different…

Yeah, it’s really bad. In eighth grade I was on my local news station because Michelle Obama came to town, and she was hosting this screening of Harry Potter. And so I was one of the people in line and they were like let’s interview some people, and I was interviewed about two of my favorite things back then, Michelle Obama and Harry Potter. And they were like spell your name so we can write it, and I swear I spelled it correctly but it came out like, Shlemar Colofe. And now that is just like haunting me. [But you’ve embraced it into your identity, that’s cool.] Yeah! I have to. I’m re-appropriating it.

Can you tell us about the documentary you recently worked on that was at the A/P/A BRIDGE exhibition?

Yeah, it was an anthology of films, it was three parts. And two of them I had done in my Sight and Sound documentary class. It’s weird, I didn’t come here to make Asian-centric films or things about my identity, I was like, I’m Filipino but I want to break boundaries and write for Broad City and be a person of color somewhere! But it became more personal because I was starting to realize, oh my gosh, being Filipino I don’t feel very visible here and I was constantly confronted with that and felt this super super big urgency to make films about Asian Americans and Filipino Americans. And that is called no history, no self.

I feel this sense that I still need to keep making stuff because when I was growing up there wasn't much and I had to either identify with like...if there was an Asian American it was London Tipton! Which was like, thank God. If there was anyone, it was Brenda Song. But being forced as a Filipino to have to identify with Chinese or Japanese or East Asians...there's definitely similarities in our cultural experiences but there is so much that is different. I felt the world was constantly telling me, this is who you are, when that's so obviously not true. And I think that's what the Asian American experience is. Or at least one of the issues in the Asian American community.

Where'd you grow up?

I grew up in Virginia. But my dad was in the military, so we lived in Japan and California. I liked Virginia. I think I grew up pretty diverse, I don't know. There's a whole bunch of people there, and in Virginia Beach since it's a military city, there's a lot of Filipinos there. They were always kinda around. I always felt different being in school. But I knew they were there, they were around the city so it didn't feel like I'm so different and I'm like a Filipino girl in a sea of white people! It wasn't really like that. But here it feels different.

Would you say that growing up you were connected with Filipino culture?

I think I was by default in it, just 'cause of my parents. But I never really felt connected to it. Especially when I was a younger teenager, I felt like I was super trying to distance myself from it and I don't think I had the language to know what I was doing at that moment. It was like, ok, I'm going to listen to Vampire Weekend and Wes Anderson movies! I wanna be just like them. But I wasn't realizing what I was thinking, I was thinking, oh I wanna be like them, but I was also thinking like, oh I don't wanna be eating this food or having this skin.

I would think that but I didn't know that that was bad or anything. It was all internalized. I thought I was like, much different from all the other Filipino girls in my city. I like Sofia Coppola, like oh wow I'm so edgy! I think a lot of the Filipinos I knew were really involved with the cultural scene and traditional dance, and I was like I don't want to do that, I want to be way different from all these people.

What was the biggest change coming to New York for you, identity-wise?

I think towards the end of my high school career I was thinking about what it meant to be Filipino. But I wasn't actively making the choice to be like, yeah that's what I'm going to go to school and talk about. I think that was the biggest change for me, when this year was like...I always didn't want to be considered a Filipino artist or have that be a thing for me, I just wanted to be an artist and blah blah blah, but it became like, this is what I am. And I need to make it for us, for my community. It's so urgent for me now. It's so urgent for me to make things, just to show...like, what it means for me to be Filipino to people who aren't, but also to show Filipino faces and Filipino things for people who are, so they can see it. That's the most important thing to me.

What do you think spurred that change to make things for Filipinos, where before it wasn't as urgent but now it is?

I took Sight and Sound documentary and had all these weird ideas. Like I wanted to interview this guy who does holograms and do all these random things, but then I joined A/P/A BRIDGE and was learning all these things about my history and about Asian American activism. And I was like, what the heck why don't I know this at all? You learn all these things and you realize there's a precedent to you and to your whole history. Sometimes it's not even about forgetting, it really just is ignorance. I didn't know anything before that. I didn't know we had this whole thing going on with Asian American activism. Learning about that made me think about just like my personal family and my experiences, and I just decided I wanted to talk about them more.

What is the importance of having Asian American activism for you?

While everyone is constantly saying that Asian Americans don't do shit...which I think is true, I definitely think we're not as active and we could definitely be more supportive...It's outright false that we never did anything. It's important to learn about that stuff because I remember when I was learning about it, I was like, oh my god I need to do more, 'cause it makes you feel like, I don't want whatever they did to be for nothing. I want it to have a meaning, that their legacy is carried on. And yeah, it definitely inspires you. It's kinda corny but it definitely inspired me to do more in the way that I can. I don't really think of myself as an activist, because at least that word is more organizing, community building, all these things that I'm just like, I don't know how to do that. For me I just know that film is the one thing that I'm good at. I'm not really good at many things except that. If I can use that for building, understanding, I think that is important to me.

"It's so urgent for me to make things, just to show...like, what it means for me to be Filipino to people who aren't, but also to show Filipino faces and Filipino things for people who are, so they can see it. That's the most important thing to me."

How long have you making films for?

I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was 13. I grew up knowing I wanted to be something creative. I had a lot of different things--I wanted to be a Harlem Globetrotter! (laughs) They're very inspiring. But I always made my own picture books and stuff like that, I would write and draw. Like, I really love storytelling and even when I was a kid I would tell these stories to my sister. But I knew I wasn't good at prose, and I know I'm shit at drawing. So I was like, ok what's visual and writing? When I was 12, 13 my sister got into Tumblr so then we were also trolling through Tumblr and learning about like, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, all the white culture that you ever knew. So I was learning about this stuff and getting into film and I was like ok, yeah, I knew at 13 I'm going to be a filmmaker.

Has your family been supportive of that?

Oh yeah. There's definitely that stereotype that being Asian and creative is like, no, but like, my mom loves it. I think she really really loves it. I always want her in my films, and she's such a diva, so she really wants to be in it. I really truly see all of my identity because of my parents. Me being Filipino is inherited from them, and so if I lose that then I won't know who I am anymore! It's so corny, but it really truly does feel like that. [Amy: Yeah, I don't know if this is an Asian thing or not but intergenerational things are super important.]

Do you feel that Tisch is a good environment to explore these issues in? Do you feel supported?

Yeah. I think it's mostly because I found friends who also go through these things. I have collaborated a lot with people about these things, and that's where I feel supported. I definitely have professors that I go to, I have one who's Filipino and she's great, I'm chill, we're always in contact. I feel supported through her but I don't really go into classes expecting that, that like oh, they're going to understand me, they're going to have a conversation about race! Also just because there's so many instances that things happen and it doesn't get addressed and it's hard to be the only person of color there and to bring it up and like, just feels really weird. I think there are a lot of people in Tisch who are really good and who wanna support other people who go through these things.

Do you mostly do documentaries?

I don't know. It's hard because I feel like I haven't made a lot of things outside of what I do in class, so like I started out in a documentary class and then I went into a filmmaking class. I think the work I have right now is pretty even, like documentary and film. I wouldn't say I'm one or the other. I think I like everything. Like I wanna do everything. I wanna make an animated series, I don't really know. Whatever serves the story best, whatever story I wanna tell is gonna happen. I don't really wanna limit myself in that way.

Can you talk about any of the films you've made specifically? Like the process, or the meanings that you're trying to convey?

I think the big thing of getting Filipino faces, bodies, and voices, is really important to do. For me personally, with my newest film it's overt, like it starts off with a karaoke sequence, and that's how I grew up, going to potlucks and having to sit and watch my aunties sing Whitney Houston and having to be there for five hours straight. So I wanna do that and create things that call back to those moments in my life and those experiences that I know a lot of other Filipino people experienced. I want them to see that, 'cause it's really hard to see that in film. I had to relate to so many white people all my life, and I would like to not have to anymore. Especially for other Filipino people, I want them to not have to. I think with everything I'm making or trying to make, there's little hints of that. It could either be super overt, like in my newest film there's an old Filipino tale and people dancing tinikling and things that are so overtly that. But there are other hints where it'll just be like about me taking a shower or something.

There's another film I made that's about, like you know when you're in the shower and you go out of the shower but you kind of just sit in the bathroom? So it's that moment where you're just in your towel sitting on your toilet, and so the whole concept is this girl's on the phone with her friend, her boyfriend, and her mom, and she cuts in between conversations. But during this time frame she's also gonna tell her boyfriend she loves him that night 'cause she's getting ready for a date. But she also realizes that she's gay, and a lot goes on but it's only set in the bathroom. But with my mom, she says like, anak, and these little Filipino words. In the film, she's like, there's a Filipino couple on House Hunters, did you see the episode? I know my mom would get excited about seeing a Filipino couple on House Hunters.

But that's not like, Filipino commentary and me doing a whole analysis of Filipino experiences. Sometimes I just don't wanna do that, and sometimes I do. I want as much of a volume that balances between the two, where it's like this is overtly this, but also this isn't my entire life, where it's centered around me being Filipino, it's also just like sometimes I...I don't know! Go to Bobst! I really don't. That's a lie. But sometimes I just am just sitting in the shower and not thinking about being Filipino. I just exist as that and go about my day. But sometimes I'm just confronted with it and have to think about it. And so I think I want to make a bunch of different films that normalize the Asian American experience and not always about like, oh my, what is my strict dad going to think when I don't wanna be a doctor?! I'm really tired of that and I think we all are. I think it's important for me to have as much as possible. There's just so many different kinds of people who are Asian.

"I had to relate to so many white people all my life, and I would like to not have to anymore. Especially for other Filipino people, I want them to not have to."

Where do you think you get most of your inspiration from? You said when you were younger you got it from a lot of white culture…

It's really interesting, 'cause like, I remember when I was younger and into Sofia Coppola, Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson, my writing was that. It was just like, straight ripped from Fight Club, I wasn't actually writing anything original. I was like, oh, what are white people on Tumblr gonna like? I'm gonna write for them. Like, I wasn't writing from my experiences. I think a lot of things I write from are from stupid conversations I have with my friends. I don't really know where it comes from, but I feel like writing is so natural for me, like, I can beat it out in an hour. Dialogue is super easy to me.

I feel like I'm always noticing things about people or trying to understand things about people and trying to be as empathetic as possible. I think when you are like that, writing people and humans is super easy if you're constantly caring about them. Like, oh, they say this in a funny way or they say this one phrase in a funny way. There's this kid, the other day, my friend asked him if he smoked, and he was like, 'Big time.' Like, who says big time? (laughs) Like little things I like, he just looked straight off into the horizon and said 'big time.' He wasn't even looking at us, like, what are you thinking about? Jesus, Robert! It was so funny and I don't know, I'm so interested in other people and want to know them more. But I don't wanna be like, writing is so easy! Oh God, I was born with it! Like no, it's obviously very hard but I think it's also just 'cause I take so much time to understand other people.

Do you want to go into screenwriting?

Yeah, I definitely thought I was gonna be a TV writer. I'm keeping my options open, I think I definitely want to keep writing though. I think writing is the easiest for me. I just don't know how to approach it and be like, ok world, I'm a writer, take me. I don't know how to do that, so I just try to...I do sound design and I do other things and hopefully one thing I can write and direct and be super in control of everything that I make.

"Sometimes I just am just sitting in the shower and not thinking about being Filipino. I just exist as that and go about my day. But sometimes I'm just confronted with it and have to think about it."

What has your experience been like in the casting of your films? And getting a crew?

I haven't had to be in charge of a really big production, so I'm just like naturally, hey you are my friend, will you do this? So naturally, people who are in my crew and my classes were people of color. That's just who I gravitate towards, the person who's just gonna understand me the best. A lot of them are queer, and I don't know, when that exists already I don't have to think about it too much because I know I want to work with you guys. I have like, one white friend.

Next semester is when I do my 'big production class' and I have to make a film, and I definitely will be conscious of that because I've definitely been on sets where it was like basically all white people and that sucks. I did recently try to cast Filipino people which was super tough. I tried to go on Backstage and look for Filipino people but there was nothing. There were also people who were Chinese American, and I was like, that's not really what I'm looking for. I'm kinda scared because for my next film there is a little Filipino girl in it, and I've been trying to think like, is that even possible to ~find~ her?...Who is she? (laughs) So I've just been trying to figure out if this can even be made in this time frame at this school. Is that feasible? And it also involves a Filipino teenager that I have to think about also because I can't just act in all of my films, even though that's how it is right now, because there isn't really anyone else. Finding a Filipino person is difficult when everything I wanna make right now revolves around that.

Watch a clip from Shalemar’s film, The Filipino Picture Show, here.

Follow Shalemar’s insta here and see more of her work here.

Interview by Elaine Lo and Amy Ni

[lunar-stories-blog]

April Recap & Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

For those of you who don’t already know, May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage month. Exciting stuff folks! To help usher in a month of celebration and recognition, here is a list of really cool, really beautiful creatives and their projects.

Giphy released a collection of GIFS for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month celebrating historymakers, celebrities, Q&A reactions, and more from AAPI communities. 

Film/TV

Brown Girls -- Trailer from Open TV (beta) on Vimeo.

Brown Girls is an awesome new webseries from the creative minds of Fatimah Asghar and Sam Bailey. It features a cast and crew that is made up of people of colour, women and non-binary folks. The story revolves around best friends Leila, played by Nabila Hossein and based on Asghar, and Patricia, played by Sonia Denis and based on Asghar’s real-life bff/platonic life partner, Jamila Woods, as they navigate young adulthood in Chicago. The characters and their relationships give off a natural sincerity as they tell stories by and for people of colour, weaving in different intersections of identity that make the show relatable without losing complexity. 

Binge watch it here!

Photograph of Yasmine Al Massri

Yasmine Al Massri is a Lebanese-born American/French actress of Palestinian and Egyptian descent. She made her film début in the the 2007 critically acclaimed Lebanese LGBTQ-themed comedy-drama film, Caramel by Nadine Labaki. Now she stars alongside Priyanka Chopra, playing badass identical twin FBI agents Nimah and Raina Amin in the ABC thriller Quantico.

NBC Asian America Presents: A to Z (2017) is a four minute video that highlights 26 emerging voices of the AAPI community, redefining what it means to be Asian American and/or Pacific Islander today.

Visual Art

Poster for the Janus Films/Criterion Collection re-release of Tampopo.

Ping Zhu’s loose, colourful illustrative style has been seen in a number of different publications and projects, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, GOOD Magazine, and more.

 Screenshot of @not__sari Instagram account.

@not__sari is a Toronto-based Tamilian Instagram account (and soon to be online store?) by graphic designer @notpranavi. Her designs include collages, graphics, pins and more, and explore things like parental pressures and microaggressions from white people from a Tamilian-Canadian perspective. She also makes really cute samosa graphics.

Screenshot from @sippystraw.

Wen Wen is an artist and model who has gained attention recently for being the Bay Area’s “internet flower boy” (is that a term I should know?). His Instagram bio says he is “the human embodiment of tofu,” which makes a lot of sense since he seems to have perfect glowy skin (and also perpetual cool hair). He also happens to be transgender. And it may lowkey highkey be my goal to meet + interview him. 

Screenshot of @manjitthapp Instagram.

Manjit Thapp is a UK-based illustrator who makes prints, t-shirts, tote bag,s stickers, and more. Shop her prints here! 

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email us at asianartscollective@gmail.com.

[lunar-stories-blog]

I Mean Business: Misty Goh

Poster designed by Josephine Chang.

What's your name?

I go by Misty, but officially it's Yu Xi Goh (吴宇希).

How would you define yourself as a creative?

I’m going to be Creative Development Intern at Fullscreen Media this summer, but I actually wouldn't define myself as a creative, though I have a vision in everything I do. That does include thinking outside of the box, but that doesn't include an artistic sense.

For example, this year I am Production Manager at Chelsea Music Festival, so the biggest part is building a team, finding interns, as well as programming. I don't know a lot about classical music. I don't know the difference between Bach's first symphony and the second, but I know that night is about Bach.

I’m also co-producing a new film called Ripple. It’s a senior thesis written and directed by Min-Wei Lee, and it’s based on a true story. It’s an all Asian cast and super diverse creative team. 

So you're more behind the scenes, in terms of production?

Yes.

But you're a cinema studies major?

Yes. So I started out as an Econ major, and I realized very quickly that although I was okay at it, I wasn't having fun nor was I enjoying the competitiveness. So I wanted to do something that I liked. Since high school, I've always really liked performing arts, so I thought Cinema Studies would allow me free time to do internships and things I like. In the end I can still produce films. The goal is not to be a director, like I said I'm not a creative. The goal isn't to be an actor, either. So I guess I'm looking at the corporate, business side that Cinema Studies allows me to do.

How would you describe or define your Asian identity?

First and foremost, I am from Singapore, so I think of that as home. I was born there. I go back every year. A lot of my culture, my tradition is definitely from there that I try to bring here as well.

How would you say that applies to your work?

Right now there are a lot of pressing issues with diversity, especially in film, you know, Oscars So White, and other global movements. I think in film even though it's white, rarely do you see people of Asian descent, so that is really important to me when I think about casting, who's working behind the scenes. For this current short film that I'm producing I'm trying to think of not only an all women behind the scenes crew but also include more people of color and Asians. Same with the music festival. I mean, if you look at classical music it's predominantly white, but if you look at behind the scenes there are more people of color. Not everyone can afford to play the violin. It's something about class that you can't avoid with that sort of industry. I'm always thinking about including all these different people to work with to better the environment.

“Right now there are a lot of pressing issues with diversity, especially in film, Oscars So White, and other global movements. I think in film even though it's white, rarely do you see people of Asian descent, so that is really important to me when I think about casting, who's working behind the scenes.”

I remember we were talking about your internships with production companies, kind of their attitudes towards this industry's treatment of women and people of color...

Yeah. So I was really lucky to have been working with Wild Obscura films. Basically it's two female bosses--one's mostly a producer and one's a director, though each does both. The first day I came in, they said to me, you know we stand up for women, that's what we do here. If anyone says anything sexist, racist, or ableist or anything against you, you should come talk to us about it. Though we can't do much to change the industry, we can refuse to work with that person. So that gave me a lot of confidence and comfort knowing that they're a small company they're willing to do so much, just for an intern. I just think it's commendable to be able to stand up to that. It's so easy to think, you just have to suck up, you just have to adhere to it so that you can rise above the ranks later on, but the fact that they're doing this, it meant a lot to me.

Do you identify as a person of color, and what does that mean for you in America?

I think everyone in Singapore is a person of color. Racial harmony is a big part of Singapore. In the U.S., I think I've been lucky enough to be a part of communities where there are a lot of people of color, be it my boarding school, be it NYU, so I don't feel out of it. But I definitely identify as a person of color.

So you went to boarding school in the States for high school. Do you want to talk about that experience, and do you feel American at all? Is it a part of your identity?

I do have the accent, so that's funny. It was sort of an interesting experience because I'm definitely more Americanized than my friends in Singapore, my friends from Singapore here, but it's also because I've lived in this country for so long, and I've always been going to American schools.

But if you met someone, you wouldn't say I'm American.

No, definitely not. I think in the legal sense that'd be a lie. I feel like if I were to call someplace home, it'd definitely be Singapore.

So do you see yourself moving back to Singapore and living there?

The industry there is so small, it is growing though. I think this year we had two films go to Cannes, we just won something at Sundance, which is very exciting. I think a sound mixer from Singapore was just nominated for an Oscar, for La La Land. So there's hope that the industry will grow, but for the next 5-10 years, I think the U.S., Europe or maybe China is a better place to learn, to develop and build my career before I go home.

Earlier you talked about Asian communities and having that at NYU...

I definitely have a Singapore circle of friends as well as this literature circle that is mostly Singaporean. It's not exactly a book club, it's a potluck so you just bring in stuff, and you have all of these Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling authors and here they are, just sitting in someone's living room reading for an hour. You make really interesting friends from all walks of life, they might not even be in the art community, most are, but you get people from architecture, business. It's called Singapore Unbound and they curate the Singapore Literature Festival and Second Saturdays readings mentioned above. Sometimes it's poetry night, other night it's more short stories, they also have open mics as well. I just think it's a really nice community.

Do you feel like there's much of a community within Tisch?

I transferred into Tisch so I was maybe two years late because I also did a semester abroad. So I think this is my first year actually in Tisch and even then I spend half my time at Stern doing my minor in BEMT, so I don't feel a sense of community in Tisch or even in terms of NYU. Of course we have friends that go to NYU but at the end of the day I don't think we're friends because of NYU. I guess yes because we met there, but I don't think we meet at NYU, we don't talk about NYU, other than, oh shit I have an exam coming up.

“The first day I came in, they said to me, you know we stand up for women, that's what we do here. If anyone says anything sexist, racist, or ableist or anything against you, you should come talk to us about it. Though we can't do much to change the industry, we can refuse to work with that person. So that gave me a lot of confidence and comfort knowing that they're a small company they're willing to do so much, just for an intern.”

You transferred into Tisch from Econ, and you told me that in high school you were planning on going into physics. How did that decision come about and how did your parents take it?

I was really involved with physics in high school, but I was putting the same amount of hours in labs as I was in theater, because I was stage managing all of the productions as school. I was working late nights, figuring out the cast and crew with the director, all of these problems on set...so I don't think it was that unnatural for me to switch from Econ to Tisch.

My parents are very liberal and supportive of me going into anything as long as I was happy, so I'm really fortunate to have that.

When you tell people that you switched from Econ to Cinema Studies, do they usually not see the connection?

Definitely, but I do think some aspects of the market is interesting, it's important to know what's going on. It's also just nice to be in the arts. You know your future is going to be about managing your own finances and to be able to know how to do that yet also manage your own stuff, is nice.

We've been interviewing a lot of artistic people, but part of what we wanted was diversity and intersectionality and just things that you wouldn't expect, and I think your work and what you want to do in the industry is very...people don't think about that aspect.

My culture is very practical. If you think about the Singaporeans at NYU, 90% are probably in Stern or Econ just because they want a stable job and they want to graduate. Not many people are in the arts. It's been driven into our minds that Singapore is just this small red dot, like we have to fend for ourselves in this big world. It's not like we're “old money” because we're not--we're such a young country. There's so many different factors that put us out there and I feel like in order to make it visible we're growing more and more materialistic. I think Singapore is the most expensive place to live in in the world. It's crazy.

So to be able to sustain that, there are so many different choices we have to make--like sacrificing marriage until later in life, limiting your number of kids, relationships, career trajectories. That's why we're driven to more practical solutions to financial problems. It's not just that our parents want to be lawyers, doctors. They want us to sustain ourselves. I think we think in terms of 5 years from now instead of next month or next year.

Have you ever felt, in the film industry or in life in general, that your identity as an Asian person has influenced the way that people treat you?

I have been hired for being Asian. I mean, the reason I got so far with the music festival is because I can speak Chinese. The reason I could do so much in Paris was because I can speak Chinese, I can read Chinese. I don't think that being Asian is such a bad thing. (laughs) Especially with the market going to China, and especially being able to speak English and Chinese and being able to work in a professional setting in both. And French is just a bonus. So I think that knowing what people in China want, what people in America want, finding those similarities that those share, and finding out how to market a film in that way, that's very desirable for most production companies.

But so many investors are going to Hollywood from China, like HuaYi Brothers had a major part in The Edge of Seventeen. That's why the lead guy was Asian! He's a Chinese guy who plays a Korean, but I'm okay with it. (laughs) Baby steps. So things like that give me hope in the industry. I do think we're moving forward. I think being able to sort of know what we want here in America and compare that to what they want in China, which is definitely the blockbuster action type...I'm not sure if I'll end up having that kind of job, but it would be a nice job to have, sort of connecting the two and being that bridge. That's the dream.

Interview by Elaine Lo and Amy Ni.

Find Misty’s upcoming film, Ripple, on Facebook here.

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All photos by Sam Soon

View more of Sam’s work here.

Follow her Instagram here.

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Not Your Submissive Asian: Sam Soon

Graphic Designer Leslie Xia for the Sad & Asian project (2017)

You may have seen photos from Sam Soon’s series Sad & Asian floating around online spaces lately. They’re eye-catching, vibrantly colored portraits of members of Sad & Asian, a 4,000-strong Facebook group that serves as a community for those identifying as creative Asian femmes, and a catalyst for dialogue on contemporary issues. Sam is a junior at NYU Tisch majoring in Photography and hails from San Mateo, CA. We chat about her vision and inspiration for the series, Asian representation in the media, and her ties to the West Coast.

What do you do?

I am a photography major in Tisch right now. I've done a lot of documentary work around feminine identities and queer identities but now I've kind of shifted my focus into Asian-American identities that encompass all of those.

How did you get started with your Sad & Asian series and what inspired you?

I'm documenting the group Sad & Asian, which was founded by Esther Fan and Olivia Park at RISD. Now it's got over 4,000 members. I'm doing an open call for subjects in the New York City area and photographing them. I posted in the group awhile back and since then I've had 9 or 10 people. Because of the posts I've been doing since then, more people have been contacting me.

I joined the group in November, and I thought it was such an interesting way of interacting with one another, and such a way of supporting each other that I had never seen before, so I thought it would be interesting to take people out of that online space and see what they're actually like and what they're about.

So after you contact them or they contact you, how does it usually play out?

So I’ll ask them how they want to be portrayed in the photoshoot and when they see a photo of themselves, what they like about it. And if they have any props that further that vision, to bring them in, and if they have any other outfit ideas to bring it all in. And then we shoot.

I've noticed that a lot of the photos have a similar theme--you play with lighting a lot. Do you want to talk a bit about the aesthetics?

Yeah, for one thing I never shot that much in studio before so this is also a challenge for me. But I really wanted to do something--it sounds lame to say edgier, but I thought it would be a good juxtaposition especially because when I started shooting, the whole Karlie Kloss Vogue thing had just come out. The lighting there and all the saturation is really subdued, which furthers the whole typical representation of submissiveness. And so I really wanted to counteract that, so in some ways it's an open response to that, but not really. I just wanted to make it really vibrant and really in your face. [Amy: That's so interesting, I never thought about the subdued colors along with the submissive stereotype.] Yeah, it's all subconscious. You can do so many different things with color.

"I thought it was such an interesting way of interacting with one another, and such a way of supporting each other that I had never seen before, so I thought it would be interesting to take people out of that online space and see what they're actually like and what they're about."

Do you do a lot of intersecting identities in your own work?

Yeah, for sure. I didn't work with the intersection of race until this year, but I worked with what it means to be non-binary or female-identifying, and queerness, and my work from last year which was my first year in Tisch, I actually did a project at the end of last year about female-identifying and non-binary people in the city and where they go to find calmness and quiet.

When I was doing that project I was thinking about things that are important to me, even when I was applying to Tisch. My whole application was about the concept of quietness and places I can go to find that, especially living in cities because I was living in London, and here. I think starting out a project by thinking about what's important to you, and wanting to explore that in other people, is a really good place to start. At least that's where I've started in all of my projects.

Are most of these projects mostly just things you come up with on your own or class assignments?

They're for class, mostly. But my latest one that I started back home is a bunch of self-portraits, holding a mirror in natural settings. That was just an independent project.

Do you do film, or digital, or everything?

I do both, but mostly digital. Just 'cause film is more expensive. I wish I could shoot film more and that I was better at it.

Architecture student Joyce Li for the Sad & Asian project (2017)

Can you talk about where you're from, and a bit about your background?

I grew up in the Bay Area in California, in San Mateo. I was originally adopted from Chengdu, China, but I was adopted into an all-Chinese family so there wasn't much discord because of that, and I always knew I was adopted. My high school was like a third Asian. I never felt like that part of my identity was challenged or that it was that big of a deal until I moved to London for my freshman year, then people would start shouting "nihao" on the street and like, ask me what kind of Asian are you? And then I was like, oh, things are a little different outside of my very liberal Asian bubble.

Have you always been into photography?

No, when I was like 13 I'd take my mom's camera and take pictures of flowers really up close (laughs) like everyone did. I'd be like, wow, I'm such a photographer! But freshman year of high school I applied to be on our school's newspaper as a photographer on a whim and I got in, which was cool, and so that started me on a photojournalism route.

By my senior year I was really tired of it, of telling stories that only other people wanted me to tell. I was in AP Photo junior year and I finally got to construct my own narrative using visuals. So that was a huge turning point for me, even though my photos were not that good. It was really important to gain that level of communication.

So did you know you wanted to be a photography major when you applied to NYU?

No, not at all. I went into the LS program kind of on the fence about being a photography major, so that's why I went to London and took all of these GE's. But by the end of the year I had taken so many photos and there's nothing I want to do more, so I just applied to Tisch and got the internal transfer.

Untitled self-portraits from an in-progress independent series (2017)

What made you want to go to NYU?

Originally, when I was in high school applying to colleges, I was like, I gotta get as far away from California as possible. But now I'm like, aw, I really miss home and kinda wanna go back. I really want to go to CCA for grad school in Oakland. I think a lot of people that I've talked to from the West Coast want to go back.

I don't know if I want to settle down in San Mateo, where I came from, because I feel like it's too small sometimes. Like being around my family too much is going to get too claustrophobic. When I was a kid, my mom wanted me to be close to my grandma and having that relationship was really important to me and to her, so I would want that for my own kids. But I don't want to be too close.

"I never felt like that part of my identity was challenged or that it was that big of a deal until I moved to London for my freshman year, then people would start shouting "nihao" on the street and like, ask me what kind of Asian are you? And then I was like, oh, things are a little different outside of my very liberal Asian bubble."

What do your parents think of your photography in general, and are they supportive of it?

My mom is really supportive of it. I did an archive-based project of my grandma's old photos a while back and my mom was really supportive. So was my grandma, she gave me all her old albums to bring back to school. They were like 70+ years old and falling apart, and she trusted me to lug them across the country. But I think they like it because I'm also preserving our own family history and in the process of creating my own, which I think they appreciate.

But sometimes I think they think I'm a little too radical (laughs). Which is bound to happen. [Amy: That's awesome. I feel like for a lot of Chinese families, we don't have a lot of family history or records because they burned everything. Like I always asked my mom like, what did your grandparents do, where were they from? Who are our extended family members? I know people who have family books with their family trees handwritten, but we don't have any of that. Elaine: Yeah, I've never even seen a photo of my dad when he was a kid. Amy: Me neither!]

I think with Dads especially, there's a particular silence. Which is kind of hard to overcome. I found that's harder to overcome in a father-daughter relationship than a mother-daughter relationship. I'm just speculating because of Asian masculinity standards, they don't want to talk about things that are a little more difficult when it comes to things about family history.

A single frame from Tell Me Who You Are Pt I, the archive-based project focused on Sam's maternal grandmother. (2016)

Is that something that you've explored in your work, Asian masculinity?

I definitely want to. I definitely was thinking about doing that for my thesis, but I think there's so much that I still want to do surrounding my mom's side, like with my grandmother, that I want to get to a point where I feel content about the work I've done, or the things that I've figured out before I move on to another side.

How important is it that in photos or other types of visual art, that people have some kind of social or political message, in your opinion?

I never really go into a project thinking about the political repercussions of it, even though I know that's unavoidable because of what I look like, what my subjects look like, who I am, who they are. I just think about qualities of myself that I have a hard time understanding and I want other people to not feel so alone. And that they can see a picture and identify with it. I think that's really important for all visual artists, to be creating something like that, not necessarily creating work for other people but creating work that's telling some version of their own truth.

With your current project, Sad & Asian, what kind of message are you trying to portray, if any?

What originally piqued my interest about doing a project like this was that other people in the group could see other members that they maybe could interact with and become online friends with in a way that's really powerful and dynamic, that brings them to life a little more. Maybe see their own professions represented, aspects of their own cultures represented that they have a hard time communicating about themselves.

What are your thoughts on representation in the media?

This is a very good question because Ghost in the Shell just came out. I mean, obviously there's a problem with representations of Asian-Americans in the media. I guess I'll keep it centered on the group 'cause that's a little easier, but representations in the media are hard to talk about from an East Asian perspective because East Asian perspectives are the ones being told, but they're being told really poorly. So there's that level of disappointment but a level of disappointment that not all of what it means to be Asian in America is being told. And then the constant erasure by whitewashing is consistently disappointing but not surprising. I don't know if you guys saw the casting call for the new Mulan movie, but it actually gave me a little bit of hope because they wanted someone who's 18-20 and who is Chinese and speaks fluent Chinese.

"I think that's really important for all visual artists, to be creating something like that, not necessarily creating work for other people but creating work that's telling some version of their own truth."

Do you think you're a part of any creative community at NYU or in Tisch?

Not really. I mean there are some people I'm friendly with in the department, but we've never hung out outside of class, and it's hard especially because I was a transfer so a lot of those bonds had already been formed before I got there. And I have a lot of friends who do their own creative things but it's not the same things as I do. But it's good to have those kinds of friends to just knock around ideas with. Especially when they come from different backgrounds and areas of expertise.

Do you have any specific photographers or people you look up to in general or that you get inspiration from?

Yeah. I've been getting a lot of inspiration lately from Carrie Mae Weems. My work is not like hers at all, but just the way that she approaches different concepts of black feminine life...it gives me new perspectives about how to think about my own life, even though I don't share many identities with her. But just to look at her work and know that she's so successful gives me a lot of hope.

Do you feel like Tisch is a supportive environment? Like you're free to do whatever?

With my professors, for sure, yeah. Sometimes I feel more alone, which I feel like is common with NYU, but when I think about all the professors I've had and all the individual support I've gotten from them, I really wouldn't want to go anywhere else. I'm lucky because the photo department is small so I get to have the same professors once or twice in my college career, so they're familiar with my work and I'm familiar with theirs. Interview by Elaine Lo and Amy Ni.

For just Sam’s work, click here.

View Sam’s full portfolio at samanthasoonphotography.com.

Follow her Instagram at @samsoooooooon.

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by Saki Kanomata. Follow her on instagram at @starkidsaki.

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“I love human behaviour, as individuals and as mass groups of people”: Saki Kanomata

Born and raised in New York, Saki studies at NYU Tisch School of the Arts and is somehow able to pull off all the fluorescent hair colours of your wildest middle school dreams, flaunting that effortless cool that New Yorkers seem to be born with. We talked about the importance of producing quality art, representation, and the art of storytelling. 

  How do you define yourself as a creative?

I’m studying film and TV – that’s my major. And then I have a minor in child mental illness and [I’m] probably applying for a BEMT (Business of Entertainment, Music and Technology) minor as well.

I’m still trying to define what my medium is. Right now I’m trying to experiment in drawing and animation and trying to find a passion within the film industry.

How do you see your identity as an Asian person?

“Forget” is the wrong word for this but sometimes I forget that that’s what people see me as. ‘Cause obviously, my facial features. But I feel like sometimes I don’t take full responsibility of my Asian identity as much as I should. Maybe I should be doing more to represent myself.

Do you see yourself as more American than Asian?

I see myself more as a New Yorker than anything. I don’t really like to say I’m American. I like to say I’m a New Yorker because I feel like that’s very different from the rest of America.

And also, depending on the question, like “where are you from?”, then I suddenly remember, oh people want the answer – Japan, not New York. That’s when I’m like, oh that’s how people see me.

So you see yourself as a New Yorker and then you’re reminded by other people that they don’t necessarily see you as that?

Yeah. I feel like I’m saying it as if it’s a bad thing, but I’m not. I just wish I recognized that more.

Do you have a strong relationship with your cultural heritage?

Not as much as I’d like to. I’m first-generation, my parents came from Japan. I feel like they tried to raise me up more Western than they would have if they brought me up in Japan. So I think they tried to be more lenient and didn’t try to pressure me into learning Japanese that much, or to press that culture on me. I now I wish that they did, although back then when I was tiny, I didn’t really want that.

Do you speak Japanese?

I speak enough to talk to my parents and to get by if I ever visited Japan, but not enough to maybe live there.

“I feel like I have a responsibility to make quality art and film ‘cause that’s what I’m putting out there.” 

Does your ethnic identity or Asian identity present itself in your artwork?

It didn’t use to, but I’m trying to consciously put that in there now, especially through animation. I’m taking my first animation class and for my final I really want to have an element of cultural background in there, whether it’s my personal one or people of colour in general.

Our teacher is asking us to submit two treatments. For one of them, I’m thinking of doing an abstract 2D digital film of figures forming into other figures and merging in and out. For example, I’m thinking of the rising sun image with the Japanese flag, and that turning into an eye, and then that forming into a comment about Asian eyelids, how people sometimes don’t know about that, so if they catch that then it’s great, but if they don’t it forms into a silhouetted figure, and metaphorically goes through my life. And then it would go back to the setting sun at the end.

Do you have a specific target audience? Is it for the general public?

I’m thinking about the message I’m putting out there no matter who sees it. I feel like I have a responsibility to make quality art and film cause that’s what I’m putting out there.

Do you wanna talk about some of the films you’ve made and the message you want to portray in them?

Last semester I did my first short film for a class. It was about a group of friends, but I focused on two best friends within that group. And one of them I wrote as an Asian American character and she was feeling stuck in high school, not knowing where she wanted to go to college, and in life and what to pursue. Her friends were all excited and applying to college and knew what they wanted. ‘Cause I was in that place in high school. I wrote it mostly about high school, not her identity, but I did try and sprinkle that into conversations. I think that stories about people of colour shouldn’t be just because they’re people of colour.

“And then suddenly I feel like I’m under a spotlight and they see me as a representation of Japan even though I’m not.” 

Have you ever felt pressure to be representative of your entire ethnicity or race?

Yeah. Every time I’m reminded that something I do might be stereotyped as Asian, I get very self-conscious. Except when I’m with my other Asian friends and they understand and we joke around about it.

This might be a bit paranoid of me but whenever I meet a new person and they’re not Asian, they’re maybe white, European or something, and we start talking small talk about where we’re from, and sometimes they’re very interested in Japan but they’re not actually Japanese or Asian. And then suddenly I feel like I’m under a spotlight and they see me as a representation of Japan even though I’m not. And they keep asking me questions, and I’m like, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about my culture [laughs] basically. I really need to learn more about Japan.

Do you feel like you fit into an Asian community either in your childhood, growing up in New York, in Queens or at NYU?

At NYU I do. Most of my friends happen to be Asian. I went to an international school K through 12 here in Manhattan, so I never really thought of an Asian community, more of a people of colour community. All my friends were usually people of colour. Some of them happened to be Japanese but a majority were international.

What does it mean to you to identify as a person of colour in American or Western politics today?

That’s a loaded question. I feel like that puts more pressure on every person of colour. I’m a lot more invested in politics now, especially since the inauguration. And I feel like it’s more of a fight within the whole community of people of colour, not just Asians or Hispanics or Blacks. So I feel a lot more solidarity with the people protesting. I didn’t realise there was so much of that support before. Maybe we didn’t worry about it as much during the Obama administration.

In politics when the term “people of colour” is said it’s usually the Black Lives Matter movement, or the whole wall building thing. (Oh my god.) I have to admit I do forget that I am under that category when something is said about people of colour from the White House or something. ‘Cause although I support the Black Lives Matter movement, I forget that I’m a part of that. I’m not white.

Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m allowed to voice my opinion cause others might think, oh you’re not black, oh you’re not Hispanic, you don’t know. But then I remember, oh wait, I am a person of colour, I am a woman, I’m a minority. So I guess I do have a valid voice, sometimes, when it’s appropriate.

Oh, but about film representation - whenever there’s talk about diversity in TV and film, most of that diversity is categorised by if there’s a black person or Hispanic person, and I don’t realise usually that there are no Asian people in a lot of the TV shows and movies that I watch. And it kind of concerns me that I don’t even notice until someone points it out to me. And representation really matters. Not just in film. Like, my friend who is a chem major, she recently met an astrophysics professor, who is a woman, at her all-girls school. And when she met this female doctor, she realised that she might wanna be an astrophysicist. She thought, oh this woman is an astrophysicist, maybe I could be one too.

“I mostly just love the art of storytelling, especially on a very human level. I love human behaviour, as individuals and as mass groups of people. How they act and react.”

Do you have any artistic role models or influences? Work that you really like?

All of the Ghibli movies. Both for how beautiful they are in terms of animation, but also the messages and stories of these girls and their adventures. Miyazaki wanted to portray childhood in an innocent, adventurous, and also empowering way for young girls in Japan. I look up to that.

Did you always know that you wanted to pursue film and animation?

No… well, animation – I took this class mostly because my friend, Cha, recommended it. And I thought, why not try every route I can? Film – I never had a passion for it before I came to NYU. I did have an interest, obviously, or else I wouldn’t have applied. I mostly just love the art of storytelling, especially on a very human level. I love human behaviour, as individuals and as mass groups of people. How they act and react.

How was your decision to pursue an artistic field received by your parents and family?

My mom was always supportive. Growing up, every time I’d write a poem she’d be like, “oh you’re gonna be a famous author one day,” or every time I drew something, “oh you’re gonna be a famous artist,” which kind of put pressure on me. But my dad, he thought I was gonna go to Princeton for some reason. I never even applied. He bought merchandise and everything, like dad, I’m not going to Princeton. He wanted me to be an architect or something more mathematical. Or a lawyer. Or something like that. But I think what turned him around was the fact that it was NYU and it was one of the few schools that he actually knew about in America, and how famous it was.

I feel like there’s a perception that first-generation Asian-Americans have a disconnect with our parents, largely because they have very different expectations for us. Do you feel that your family fits into or is different from that?

Yeah there’s definitely a disconnect. I think it’s evenly split between my fault and kind of my parents’ fault. For example, we don’t really talk about deep issues like politics and social issues. I also don’t really know what their views are, politically. I doubt that they’re Trump supporters, but I try to avoid that just cause I don’t want to start anything. I keep those conversations within my friends and classrooms. When it’s appropriate.

View one of Saki’s animations here. 

Follow Saki’s instagram at @starkidsaki.

Interview by Amy Ni.

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✨💖💫🌙February Recap🌙💫💖✨

By Elaine Lo

Anything Asian- and arts-related in February that caught our attention. 

Ren Hang, 2014

Chinese photographer Ren Hang tragically died at 29 earlier this month. He was known for his striking, stripped-down portraits exploring the implications of the human body. 

These data visualizations by graphic design student Joy Li of Sydney, Australia, elegantly demonstrate the complex intersections of language, self-representation, and identity that she grapples with growing up as an Asian-Australian. Prints for sale here!

I’ve been following Julia Ling Kelleher’s work on YouTube for a while now. She’s an insanely talented filmmaker based in LA, and her daydreamy, throwback-style films ooze ‘90s girlhood and will make you feel like you’re 13 years old again, twirling the cord of a phone around your finger as you gab with your best friend about your favorite member of ‘NSYNC (in the best way possible). 

I’ve also been obsessed with Camilla Engstrom on Instagram. Look at how cute those prints are! She is an effortlessly cool artist and model from Sweden whose favorite subjects are, according to her bio, “plants, cats, and naked ladies.” Check her stuff out at @camillamengengstrom. 

Shoutout to Jin Ha, a Tisch ‘16 Alum who will perform in Hamilton in Chicago this fall! 

These T-Shirts created by Sad Asian Girls are pretty dope. 

The Museum of Chinese in America is holding a ‘Know Your Rights’ event for immigrants Wednesday, March 1st.

Constance Wu is said to star in the new film adaptation of Crazy Rich Asians. 

Last but not least, check out this article by The Guardian on New York’s first queer Lunar dance party.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Email us at asianartscollective@gmail.com.

[lunar-stories-blog]

View Ally’s portfolio at allyzhao.com.

[lunar-stories-blog]

Multidisciplinary creative Ally Zhao talks family, intersectional art and identities

Ally is my memelord roommate. We met almost one year ago while studying abroad in Paris. Since then we’ve shared many candid photos, memes, and late nights writing papers, out in the city, and talking about race relations and queerness on our quintessential Brooklyn fire escape. Full of insight, vision, and an inspiring fearlessness, Ally talked to us about family, the essentialism of identity politics, and her art over dinner at a soba joint. -Amy 

How would you describe yourself as a creative?

I feel like I am someone who has been making art for so long that it is very much intrinsic to my identity now. Within the vocabulary of artistic practice, I don’t think I have one word to use as an umbrella term for everything, because I do a lot of things. I photograph, I illustrate, I’ve done video art and performance art. There’s not really one word I would use.

How do you define your Asian identity? Or how do you perceive it?

Well, I’m Chinese-American. Actually, fun fact, I am an eighth Korean on my Mom’s side, so my great-grandma is Korean, I suppose. But that’s not something I knew until I was 17. I think my parents just brought it up one day. I was like, wow I feel like I’ve been living a lie my whole life. Which actually kind of explains why when I came to NYU, a lot of people, a lot of Koreans specifically, would come up to me and ask if I was Korean.

Did they not want to tell you?

It’s not that they didn’t want to tell me. My brother knew. I guess it’s something they assumed I knew, but it was news to me. So, imagine that. In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter because it’s not something I identify with.

Can you talk more about your relationship with your Chinese heritage or what it means to you?

I have a difficult time figuring out how to describe it. “It” being my identity, because I guess I just haven’t thought about it in terms of specifying what it means to me. I was born in America, but I lived for three years after I was born in China. So Chinese was my first language. As fluent as I could be for a baby, though. When I came back to the States, I started to learn English and lost my fluency in Chinese. So there’s always been this difficult language barrier to deal with because I can understand a lot of Chinese perfectly, it’s just a matter of speaking it that doesn’t compute. So it’s difficult because I feel like in terms of communication, it’s one of those, it’s like a double mirror-- you know what I mean? One of those double mirrors where you can see through one side but then the other side can’t see you? [Elaine: A double sided mirror?] Yeah, a double-sided mirror, in the sense that I can understand Chinese but it’s difficult for me to speak it.

Have you ever felt that your lack of fluency in the language has created a disconnect between you and your Chinese identity?

I think yes because I feel like Chinese identity is so tied to family. If I can’t communicate with so much of my family, then what do I have? You know what I mean? I sometimes have trouble reconciling being Chinese-American because of that language barrier. There’s a lot of feeling like I’m not Chinese enough. Because if you walk around NYU campus, you’ll just hear Chinese people speaking fluently with each other, and there’s just an aspect of, well, I don’t belong to that.

Do you feel like you belong to the American identity?

I mean, I would have to say yes, just because – what else is there for me to belong to? But at the same time, it’s not something that I want to have to embrace because of the current state of America. But yeah, I identify as a Chinese-American.

Does ethnic identity, or more specifically Chinese or Asian identity, manifest itself in your artwork?

I think it didn’t until lately. For our self-representation class, we were reading Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel, and in reading that, I started thinking, why don’t I make art about my family?

My mom was visiting earlier this semester, and she looked at all these photos that I had hung up, that I took Paris, and she looked at me – because she was with me abroad for a couple weeks towards the end of the semester – and she was like, “oh, where are the photos of me?” And I realised in that moment, I didn’t really take any pictures of my Mom. I mostly took pictures of my friends and the scenery. And I was thinking about that while we were reading Alison Bechdel and just asking myself, why don’t I have art about these people that are so intrinsic to my life? So this semester, throughout the classes that I’ve taken, I’ve started to explore my family and familial relations, which ultimately do end up being tied to Chinese heritage and culture. I think as I realised how important it is to my identity, I started to explore that more in art.

Do you identify as a person of colour and what does that mean for you in American/Western politics and society today?

As I am not white, I definitely identify as a person of colour. And what that means for me is I that I am, unfortunately, part of a group of people that is nationally marginalised. It’s difficult in unique ways for every group, but I think for Asian-Americans it’s difficult in the sense that we have so much to live up to in the minds of white Americans because of the model minority myth. I’ve been thinking a lot about how the model minority myth is also a tool for anti-blackness and anti-black racism. [Elaine: Yeah, that’s how it originated.] Yeah. And thinking about how being a person of colour means that you are a part of a greater group of people who are ultimately completely disenfranchised by whiteness.

“I’ve started to explore my family and familial relations, which ultimately do end up being tied to Chinese heritage and culture.”

What do you think about the Asian model minority myth in terms of the race-relations narrative of just black and white, and how do you fit into that?

I think the race narrative of black and white in America is so prevalent because of America’s history of slavery. And because black Americans are one of the most brutalised groups in America. But it’s difficult because only talking about race relations in that sense completely erases all of the other non-white groups. I think our disenfranchisement has a lot to do with the model minority myth in that that narrative is dehumanising because it sets up expectations that are extremely unrealistic, and basically positions Asian-Americans as academic robots. It’s a dehumanisation that expects too much. And that expectation of too much only sets up expectations for other marginalised groups. So it’s difficult because the oppression of marginalised groups is so connected, but that gets erased in the typical narrative of black and white.

Going back to your art, you mentioned only recently you’ve been starting to make art about your family. Is there any specific message that you’re trying to portray, or some kind of greater goal with incorporating bodies that are close to you and that are Asian?

I haven’t worked towards an overall message. I think the things that I have worked on are very much ways for me to figure out my relationships to people and to my own identity. I mean, I guess a greater message can be interpreted from that, just because of how art is experienced. But I think for me personally, I have not tried to embed a greater moral or takeaway. That’s not why I make art. I very much make it for me. I guess, to be fair though, being a person whose identity intersects at a lot of different margins will inevitably draw out different kinds of messages. It’s just not something that I go in with the intention of doing.

Do you wanna speak more about your intersectional identity?

I identify as a queer woman of colour. I also – I mean, I don’t identify as this because it’s just how my life is, but I’m also mentally ill. Mental illness is something I’ve addressed a lot in art and for many years it’s been the driving force of making art. Once I started being able to cope better with mental illness, I started to look at the ways in which my identity has been shaped by that. But also, trying to navigate these other margins through that. Because being queer, for example, that’s something that I have not embraced as much as I do now. It’s something that I haven’t really figured out how I want to address in art. And maybe I just think that there is a lot of art already about queer identity, so I don’t want to make something to throw on top of the pile.

There’s this Walter Benjamin quote, it’s: “all great literature either creates a genre or dissolves it.” I think that can be applied to visual art as well. So I guess I’m just waiting for that idea that will create a genre or dissolve it.

What’s your opinion on the existing discourse in art of Asian queer people?

That’s a really good question. Maybe unintentionally there’s a part of me that’s separating those as a safety precaution. I guess I do that separation…I don’t know if I’m wording this right because I think the answer is just I haven’t thought about it a lot. So I guess I’ll have to reflect on it and come back to you.

Yeah, I mean it’s not like you have a responsibility to be the voice for this particular group.

And something that’s difficult to reconcile is how do I speak for myself without seeming like I’m speaking for so many others?

In class the other day, we read the Decolonialist Manifesto by Walter Mignolo, and what he says is basically that identify politics in the West and these questions around representation all fall into this hegemonic Western narrative of identity and politics. And what that manifesto showed me personally is that I need to be more critical of even things that seem the most critical. As in, being critical of identity politics in the West, in that it is very much a Western narrative. And because it’s such a Western narrative, there’s this issue of overall representation. I think in a sense you can definitely make the argument that identity politics is essentialising. 

How do you reconcile being queer and being Asian?

That’s tricky. I mean, I guess I’m lucky that NYU, and Gallatin especially, is a place where worrying about that intersection isn’t something that I do a lot of. But when I go home, I’m not out to my parents. I guess I have to reconcile it in a place where I can’t be visible. And just put my comfort and safety over the benefits, I suppose, of being out to my parents. Or maybe not the benefits, but whatever would come from that.

“And as I started to build this skill set of design, my parents became more accepting of me doing art. Because they saw that I could turn that into something employable.”

How was your decision to pursue art received by your parents?

It wasn’t great at first. I came to NYU with this idea that I would somehow study science, but then be a writer, but then an artist, or not even artist, but just do other things that I like. I took this bio class in CAS. No shade to CAS but it was the worst thing I ever did. It was an awful class. I think the whole semester I went to maybe five or six classes. And I realised before the semester even started, I can’t do this. So I signed up for a photography class that same semester, and my parents were not pleased when I told them I wanted to drop out of biology. They told me a career in art is not going to be prosperous, because of that stereotype of the starving artist. So I sort of said ok, I’ll do the bio class, I’ll also do the photography class and see where I end up at the end of the semester.

I was having a conversation with my Mom at the end of the semester and she was like, “why don’t you try a graphic design class?” And that ended up being a great decision. I realised I really enjoy design, it’s a very practical application of art and artistic practice. Looking back, graphic design was always something I was interested in without actually having a word for it. And that made me realise that there is an inaccessibility, being an artist in Asian communities. I took drawing classes and piano lessons and all of that art stuff when I was young, but as soon as I wanted to turn it into a career, I couldn’t. There’s this wild hypocrisy where you can do all these things you like, but then you can’t actually pursue that.

So I stopped doing science. I started getting into conceptual art and conversations about aesthetic theory, and then started to do more with graphic design but also visual art. And as I started to build this skill set of design, my parents became more accepting of me doing art. Because they saw that I could turn that into something employable. I guess looking at it now, though, the most difficult thing about my academics is, how do I reconcile being a designer but then also wanting to be an artist who engages in these very intellectual conversations? Because I’ve had graphic design jobs before and it just doesn’t get into that at all. Like, ever. And understandably so, because, you know, they’re not the same fields, but …

Do you have any people that you look up to in art or design or any of the practices that you partake in? Any specific influences?

I’m someone who doesn’t pick favourite anythings, I don’t have a favourite movie, I don’t have a favourite TV show. I think that people are very much shaped by their experiences, but experiences are interactions with other people, with places and objects. So if anything, I am very much influenced by people that I interact with daily. With friends, family, etc.

Do you feel like you fit into an Asian community?

I wouldn’t really say I belong to a community that has a specific amount of numbers or anything, I think I guess if you think about community as a greater population of Asian people, then yeah.

What about when you were younger?

Definitely when I was younger, but they were kind of communities that I was in because I was doing art classes, and they were taught by my piano teacher’s nephew, or whatever. It’s like this whole thing of Asian people who know each other who are taking art lessons with this one guy. [Elaine: I had that too (laughs).] Ally: Yeah, right? And then I became friends with his children and they were my friends growing up. And so we would all take art classes with other Asian kids. We all had piano lessons too. It was awful – the piano lessons. If you were wondering. I wouldn’t necessarily call that a community, though, just because it seemed like family friends. I never really thought about it as, We Are a Community of Asian People, it was just like, yeah, hanging out with family friends.

Do you feel a need for an Asian community right now in your life?

I’m not sure I would say I need one but I’d really like one.

I definitely see community… like the Gallatin community. Like a club. People who come together for a reason. Amy: Like for a central purpose? Ally: Either with a central purpose or some connecting factor. 

Can you talk about your photography?

I started taking photos in eighth grade [with] a dinky little point-and-shoot that my parents had lying around. I started carrying that with me everywhere. In retrospect, obviously they were kinda shitty. Or kinda shitty by today’s standards. But I was having a good time and realising that I really liked taking photos. Because prior to that I had mostly been drawing and illustrating. When I was a senior in high school I took a photography class, and then started to get more serious about it. And then, in my freshman year of college, I was taking that photography class and I decided that in the year of 2014 I would start doing this 365 challenge. Basically take a photo every single day and then upload it to wherever. So I started to do that and I got 200-some days into it and realised I have no time for this, I [was then] a sophomore, and because I had worked on my craft so much, the standard that I had for myself was a lot higher than it was when I started. If I wanted to keep improving, I realised it really didn’t matter about quantity. It mattered how much work I put into it.

That’s been something that I’ve been practicing for quite a while now. Actually, almost eight years. That’s a long-ass time. But when we went abroad, that’s when I started taking film photos. I started shooting on a 35mm film camera. And that became the go-to. I think I became a lot better at composition since then because with film you don’t wanna waste a shot, so you really have to think about the lighting, and composition, and every single factor. And that makes you such a better photographer. It’s difficult to go back to digital now.

How would you describe your style of photography?

I don’t know, I am not good at describing my own style. For digital, probably high-contrast. I definitely am more interested in portraiture than anything else. But I went through a phase, sort of my emo photography phase, where I was taking a lot of really dark photo manipulation pieces in the summer of 2014. And I think I still definitely take away parts of that aesthetic today. But I just don’t really practice that (laughs) emo photography as much.

And the other kinds of art you do?

I started mostly pencil drawing, and then onto paste, l charcoal or whatever, when I was in fourth grade, I think. 2004. So I have been [drawing] for a little over a decade, which is over half my life. So definitely something I’ve been doing for a long time. I guess I became more serious about it in October of my junior year, 2014, because I started doing inktober, which is basically where you draw something every day and post it online. I actually did follow through with this one. It made me a lot more comfortable with illustrating and a lot more interested in doing it.

View more of Ally’s work, including graphic design, photography and video, and illustration at allyzhao.com. 

Interview by Amy Ni and Elaine Lo

[lunar-stories-blog]

“A mixture, not a clash”: Yash Shankar

Yash and I were next-door neighbours sophomore year. What always amazed me was not only her unabashedly outspoken nature, but her willingness and dedication to helping others. A budding visual artist, she is also pursuing a degree in public health and has worked at a health centre for disenfranchised women. We sat on a colourful rug in her bedroom and talked about art, Indian identity, and her likelihood of marrying a white boy.  -Amy

I’m trying to say my name the right way. I always introduce myself as “Yahsh” or “Yash” (as in ash), cause British people can’t say “Yush,” and I went to British schools growing up. Also, Yash is a boy’s name in India, which I hated. My full name’s Yashvardhani, which is really long and no one can say it. Now, I’m trying to be like, “that’s stupid,” gender is dumb, and just because white people can’t say your name doesn’t mean you have to say it wrong.

I mostly paint and draw. When we lived in Bangkok, I was around 5, my parents didn’t know what to do with me so they found this dude called Mr. Roy. He was this older, white British man, I mean, typical, right? Married a Thai woman in Thailand, had a little mixed-raced baby that used to run around the house. And he used to do oil painting classes. So they put me in this class with Mr. Roy and I ended up staying until we left Bangkok 6, 7 years later. But being around only 40 year olds, my classes got really boring and I hated it. So I never wanted to go back to [oil painting]. When we moved to Dubai I experimented with acrylics and watercolours. Now I mostly work with acrylics and artist markers and pens. My style has changed a lot. I used to do landscapes and classic, really boring, white art. Now my art is so much more me and I’m doing what I like as opposed to what looks pretty. I try to experiment with Indian patterns and really clash-y, bold colours, ‘cause I feel like that’s something that’s easy to be afraid of. But I just love it and that’s so Indian, using a bunch of really random colours together.

Would you say that your style now is more Western or more Indian or either of those at all?

My style is really confused. I am trying to get more Indian with my art cause I find that my art is a way that I connect with being Indian. There’s traditional Indian art forms like kolam that are really cool, you basically do dots and patterns around the dots and they’re mathematical as well, You can use the algorithms from these patterns in computer science and I’m trying to experiment with that.

I didn’t really grow up in Western communities. I grew up mostly around different places in Asia. But obviously Western culture and media is mass produced and consumed all around the world, so I was definitely exposed to it. I learned a lot from white people and white culture. I only went to British schools growing up so even when I took art in high school, the artists we studied weren’t people of colour, they were white artists. They would throw in Basquiat sometimes, but it wasn’t anything exciting. It was very Mona Lisa, which is so boring, you know? So I’m trying really hard to go more Indian. I lived in India for all of 5 years and I feel really connected to it, but I don’t wanna portray my own culture through this Western lens that I’ve grown up in. ‘Cause whatever I do is gonna be affected by that and I don’t wanna appropriate my own culture. So I’m really trying to use and learn about it authentically and then create my own version of it, not just like, “oh this looks vaguely Indian,” and make something that Urban Outfitters would sell, cause I would hate that.

“I love India so much, I hate so many things about it and I’m angry about so many things, but I just love it so much. And that’s how I feel people should be patriotic. I can call my own country out on its bullshit”

How do you see your identity as an Asian/Indian person?

Being an Asian person and being an Asian person that goes to international schools and being an Asian person who grew up in America are such different things. I feel like people here – white people - often confuse Indian-Americans with Indian people. Indian-american culture is SO, so different than Indian expat culture and Indian national culture. Sometimes I find that I can’t really relate to Indian-American culture.

Here, there’s such a huge emphasis on assimilation and being American. I never wanna be American, not even a little bit. If I ever have to get a green card I’m gonna sob for days. And it’ll happen, I’ll probably marry a white dude, it’s gonna suck so bad. But I will never identify with being American. I have an American accent and I have American behaviours and I sound like a valley girl and I hate all these things and I just wanna be more Indian, but I lived there until I was 5 so it’s hard. Here, if you ask an Indian person where they’re from, they’ll be like “I’m from California, but my parents are from India,” and it makes so much sense to me now, after having learned about how hard it is to grow up as an Indian-American here, or as an Asian-American here. People are constantly trying to make you feel like you aren’t American.

I still introduce myself as Indian. Saying you’re Indian here is like a confession. It’s something that needs to be said. It’s like saying that you’re American isn’t enough. Like your Asian identity has to be at the forefront of everything. But everywhere else that I’ve grown up, the communities are so international and so expatriate and intermittent, everyone’s always moving, that even if I had spent 30 minutes of my life in India, I’m still Indian. And that’s fine because there’s not as many stereotypes or assumptions associated with that, so I don’t feel the need to hide from it. But when I’m here, I have to say “I was born in India but I grew up in Bangkok and Dubai,” because “I was born in India” – people just assume so many things. And it’s really frustrating.

My Asian identity is so mixed, because I associate so strongly with being Indian, and with Thai culture, and with Arab culture. I feel like Americans are very patriotic in a dumb, ignorant way, like “America’s the best, American dream,” and I’m like, “America sucks for anyone that’s not white, so you can shut up.” They don’t wanna see things that are wrong with their country. I’m starting to discover this a lot more - I love India so much, I hate so many things about it and I’m angry about so many things, but I just love it so much. And that’s how I feel people should be patriotic. I can call my own country out on its bullshit and be like, “these are really terrible things.” [Elaine: Not blind patriotism.] Yeah, I hate that. I don’t like when Indian-Americans will say Indian things wrong, and make fun of Indian accents that they see on TV, or make fun of Indian aunties. I’m like, Aw come on. People already do that. Why are we contributing to that? And it’s the context in which they do it. There’s a way in which I’ll make jokes about my culture that only people who belong to that culture can understand. Not stereotypical jokes. I don’t wanna be like, I’m secretly ashamed of [my identity] so I’m gonna make jokes that make other people comfortable and make them feel like I can make fun of myself so they can make fun of me too, and we can all be comfortable in our racism.

In your artwork, do you want to portray ideas about your own Indian identity?

Yeah definitely. In the last year or two, I’ve been really trying to be like “you’re Indian, and you should love it, and your art is Indian and you should love that”. I was really struggling with my exhibition. Feminism itself is such a western perspective to have, and you can’t apply one lens of feminism to everything. And I was trying really hard to be feminist in my art but also be Indian. And those things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive at all, but I don’t wanna be Indian in my art through a Western perspective. I don’t wanna see India as an outsider, I wanna see India as an Indian and then portray that in my art. But also I’m not fully Indian, I have other things that are a part of me, and I need them in my art too, so I feel like my art is really just me on a page. As pretentious as that sounds. I really want it to be reflective of how confused I am.

I also don’t wanna contribute to the identity crisis that people here have. I can respect why they have that, cause it’s so different growing up as an Asian in America than literally anywhere else outside your own home country, but there’s such a perception that having multiple identities leads to an identity crisis, or that it’s somehow hard. It’s a little hard, but it’s not as hard as it is rewarding. I love that I have like 75 different cultures that contribute to who I am, and I cannot imagine not waking up in the middle of the night and craving Thai food, Lebanese food, and Indian food all at the same time. And I want my art to be a mixture, not a clash. Like a combination of all these things but not like, she’s so confusing she doesn’t know where to begin.

How your cultural identity comes through in your art – is that something that happened naturally or something that you realised? Or was it something you consciously wanted to incorporate?

Both I would say. At first, when you go to art classes it’s like, this is how to draw a circle, a bowl of fruits, and whatever. And then you grow up and your art becomes what you want it to be. I was learning more about being Indian and my own culture and how I wanna experience it and relate to it and at the same time I was getting back into art. Cause I think for a bit in the middle I wasn’t really focusing on my art. I would doodle and stuff, but I wasn’t creating art. And I missed it. And when I started coming back to it, it was sort of at the same time as I was learning more about my own identity and being Asian. So they kind of went hand in hand.

And then as I started realising that I kind of like all these Indian art forms and what they look like and I liked that they belong to me, I started pushing myself to include them in my art. I naturally wanted it to happen but I had to make a conscious decision to be like, if you want to, go google these art forms, or go talk to your Mom, and actually educate yourself and just do them. That part wasn’t something that came naturally to me.

“We’ve been feminists for centuries. For forever. And I wanna be powerful in my Indianness, not despite it.”

Do you have specific influences? People or artists that you look up to?

Yeah, I’m a really bad artist in that – and my sister makes so much fun of me for this – I love art and I love creating art but I’m not interested by the Tate Modern or the Met or literally anything. I think that’s partly because I also just get angry going to the Met cause I’m just like, this is all stolen and you’re making money off it and I hate it and I don’t wanna contribute to your awful cultural theft. This isn’t yours, stop pretending like this just existed in New York.

But I definitely I don’t think I have one influence in particular. I like random things that I see on the internet about artists of colour that are talking about what it’s like being an artist of colour, or being a person of colour, and feminist art that looks at women of colour as empowered as opposed to “I’m gonna talk about how hard it is to be brown in this world,. Like yeah it is hard to be brown in this world, but why? Because of white people, not because of our own people, I mean yes partly because of our own people, but I feel like a lot of the time I’ve noticed that in the past when art was made about people of colour, it would just be pity-art, like these sad little impoverished little children who don’t get enough food, or these women who have to wear these awful hijabs. [Elaine: Rather than celebrating the culture.] Exactly. My art is definitely starting to be influenced by the Hindu goddesses. That’s where I draw a lot of inspiration. We’ve been feminists for centuries. For forever. And I wanna be powerful in my Indianness, not despite it.

Do you know hatecopy? Basically she does Roy Lichtenstein, pop art inspired, comic-book art, but Indian things and problems Indians have with white people and it’s just so good. I’m really inspired by artists like her that have a perspective on being Indian that I really relate to, which I just feel so empowered by. I want to be like, “being Indian is fucking awesome and you all should want to be,” you know what I mean? But not in the I wear bindis to festivals way, like in a “this culture is really awesome and we should stop looking at it as sad.”

Do you see yourself or your identity represented in the media or in the arts sphere?

No. But I’m starting to.There’s people like Mindy Kaling, I love her so much and she’s so important and we need people like her, but again that’s such an Indian-American experience. Mindy - and she jokes about this on her show - she’s not that Indian. She associates more with being American than she does with Indian. I think that’s such an important perspective to have. If Disney ever decides to make an Indian princess, I’m not excited, I don’t want them to take some Pocahontas-esque story about some Indian warrior princess who fell for a colonialist and then ran away to England. It would be nice for a Disney movie to have people of colour in it without having a huge emphasis on their culture. Which sounds bad but I wanna see an Indian girl in a movie who doesn’t do yoga and doesn’t have parents who expect her to have an arranged marriage. I want her to just have brown skin and that’s it. It’s like they’re trying to strike a balance but it’s not a good balance. You know that phrase, “not about us without us.” But there’s just too many shows and movies and books that are like, “let’s try to include people of colour, but I’m not a person of colour and I’m gonna write about them anyway so I look liberal and politically correct.”

Priyanka Chopra on Quantico. I love the character she plays. I think she’s really great but I think she can use her platform a little bit more, considering how famous she is, to talk about representation in the media. But Alex Parrish the character, they nailed it! The first scene that she does is her having sex with some rando, and I’m like, “go get yours, Alex Parrish! You have all the sex you want, I love it!” And you also happen to be brown and it’s so great and you’re just going to Quantico and becoming an FBI agent and the way that they talk about her, it’s not from an oppressive perspective. They don’t need to draw attention to her being Indian but  they don’t need to shy away from it either. And her accent is really good as well, she doesn’t have an over-the-top accent but it’s not entirely American, you can hear Indian parts in it.

Aziz Ansari. I feel like he’s doing a great job. He’s doing so well. First of all he’s just funny and I love that he can be funny without being mean. I feel like a lot of comedy and stand up in general is like let’s shit on these people and say it’s for the sake of humour, and I’m like why can’t we just be nice? And I just can relate to him, a little bit. He went to NYU and I go to NYU. He’s Tamil and I’m Tamil, he’s from the same state as I’m from in India.

He just gets the whole being Indian thing because that’s so great that his actual parents act on the show. They’re so good, they’re adorable! And he just does a really great job of being Indian, portraying an Indian family, as opposed to just himself. He and his dad have a great relationship and I feel like there’s that trope...there’s a disconnect between your parents and you if you’re an Asian person, but I’m so close to my parents and they know everything about me. I like that his parents aren’t like, “Ew, you’re dating a white girl.” Like, yeah I’ll probably marry a white boy, and my parents will probably be like “ugh” a little bit. But…who doesn’t hate white people a little? They grew up in a country that was colonised, their parents were alive during colonisation, they’re allowed to be like “why did you pick a white boy.”

But they’re not doing that because he’s of a different race, they want what’s best for me and they want me to be respected as an Asian person, but I like that his parents are so chill about him dating this girl. His Dad is like, “we just want you to be happy,” his Mom’s like, “we don’t need you to talk to us all the time.” There’s that other trope as well, Indian parents are so overbearing. Fine, I talk to my mom literally every day, but she’s my best friend, we have a weird Rory and Lorelai Gilmore relationship. It doesn’t need to be an overbearing relationship.

What has your experience been like regarding the stereotype of Asian parents being overbearing, and their career expectations for their children?

I think that’s so important to talk about. First of all, I’m super nerdy, I love science. Tomorrow night, I’m really excited because I’m gonna stay home and make educational posters about epidemiology because I love making posters and I think I wanna become an epidemiologist. So I wasn’t a rebel at all, I literally had my first drink in college, so my parents didn’t have a lot on their hands. They didn’t have to betray their Indianness by raising me to be a certain way. But also I’m an artist. When I said I wanted to have the art exhibition, they were the happiest for me, they’ve been wanting me to do this for ages, and they just loved it so much and they were there through the whole thing.

My Mom’s like my momager, and my sister and my dad were both so supportive. My mom wants to do it again in other places in India, they love so much that I’m an artist and they love that my sister’s a writer. We’re both really creative. Neither one of us is studying medicine or engineering, my sister’s doing political science and I want to go into public health, they’re completely fine with that. My Dad has always said to my sister and I, you can do whatever you want, but don’t get married until you’re financially independent and you can provide the kind of lifestyle for yourself that you have right now. That’s the only thing that he wants for us, to not be dependent on another dude.

I just remember when I was six and my sister was around 11 in Thailand, he used to love to quiz us with this giant encyclopaedia textbook. He’d cheat and whisper the answer to me, but I learned so much and my sister learned so much, and we had this healthy competition for academics going. It wasn’t like, which one of you looks prettiest in this dress? We both value beauty and we both wanna feel beautiful, but we were really encouraged to be smart and to be good at school. And it’s cool to talk about things that are smart, and you don’t need to shy away from it because you’re a woman, or because you’re Indian, you know?

Go follow Yash on Instagram at @kaalikali24.

Interview by Amy Ni and Elaine Lo

[lunar-stories-blog]

Jack of All Trades: Nina Jang

Anyone who knows Nina personally knows that she is one of the most genuine, inspiring, kindhearted, and engaged in life person ever. She’s from Irvine, California, and is majoring in Media, Culture, and Communications with minors in Digital Art and Design and Metropolitan Studies. She’s the digital director for Washington Square News, NYU’s student newspaper, is a black belt in Taekwondo, and if you didn’t think that was enough, she’s so stylish I literally want to steal her entirely found-from-Goodwill outfit every time I see her. We talk about what it means to be a woman of color, her many different creative interests, and her passion for urban environmentalism. -Elaine

How would you define yourself as a creative?

Before labeling myself, I would say I'm constantly curious. I don't think I'm at the level where I can say that I have an extensive collection of work, but I think along the lines of writer, painter, and sketcher.

But you're also very into design, right?

I am, yeah. I have been trying my hand a bit more at digital art, and it's a lot of fun, because it's a different sort of medium to master.

Do you identify as a person of color, and if you do, what does that mean for you in America or in Western society?

I proudly embrace the fact that I'm a woman of color, and that realization didn't come for me all of a sudden. It was much more gradual, because I immigrated from Korea, so for a solid portion of my childhood I was only exposed to life in Korea and everyone looked like me, and it was comfortable. And moving here, it was just a whole cultural shock. As a child I think I saw it with a lot more excitement and optimism. I was only 6 at that point and just growing up around kids that were my age but were different ethnicities and looked visibly different than me. My first friend here was blonde, blue eyes, and for me I only had seen that in films and TV.

I don't think I ever really felt from my friends or other people I'd met that I was 'the other.' It was actually my parents who always reminded me of the fact that because I am Asian American I have to work twice as hard. Because for other people they would never fully realize that I am American. And that's something I have come to realize after the election this year, the fact that a good portion of the country still believes in this rhetoric and ideology that spews hatred, and I think that was just a bit disappointing to me. The fact that after 15 years of living here and growing comfortable with myself as an Asian American, part of the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community, there are still some people that will never recognize me fully as American.

Do you feel like the other in your everyday life, in American society?

I always felt it. I don't think anyone directly channeled the fact that I am the other, but it was rather how they treated my parents. Since my parents had come here with a family, they were already well into their 30s by the time they emigrated here, for them they were .5 generation. I don't even know what category you would put that in, because for me I don't even know if I'm first generation, 1.5 generation...it's a very strange thing because my younger brother was born here, so I don't know what that makes him. But I think when I was a child it was how we would go to the grocery store or Target and when we'd try to check out, you could see a difference in how the cashiers would treat my parents just because at that time they had very limited English. And the fact that they had such a harsh and very rigid mindset and if you don't speak fluent English then you're not American, and you're not intelligent, and I remember it hurt me so much, and even to this day I feel uncomfortable sometimes when people approach my parents.

Why do you think you experience it more through your parents?

I think it's the fact that with Korean tradition it's a lot about respecting your parents, so when I saw someone treat them in a way that I wouldn't wanna be treated I think that was the point when I just realized that there was something different going on. And I don't think I personally feel much microaggression because I have been very fortunate to grow up in environments that had a bubble, but like I understand that I'm very fortunate to have dealt with that experience, but coming out to New York City it's a whole different world. It's a whole different reality, and I accept it and want to be a part of this because as a person in this world you need to be aware of other people's stories and how others are treated. That's how I avoided much of the microaggressions as an Asian American, but as a woman I feel a lot more microaggressions.

“And that's something I have come to realize after the election this year, the fact that a good portion of the country still believes in this rhetoric and ideology that spews hatred, and I think that was just a bit disappointing to me. The fact that after 15 years of living here and growing comfortable with myself as an Asian American, part of the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community, there are still some people that will never recognize me fully as American.”

So you feel more discrimination towards your gender than your race?

I think so. Just because when you're walking down the street, there's catcalling. And if I were an Asian American male, I don't think I would endure as much scrutiny of myself. And I also am Asian American. So maybe that duality, I don't know. I definitely feel it a lot more a a woman of color.

How do you feel your identity as a woman of color influences your creative self, or does it at all?

I definitely have always utilized art to express myself, and I think subject-wise I love portraying women without that sensual image. [Like pornographic.] Exactly, and I think you can draw a woman's body in a beautiful way without any sort of objectification, and I think that's what I've always been trying to channel for my own art and work. So I do love drawing women, just the body and the shape. In a weird way I think it's a way for me to represent myself. Just the fact that you can be so creative with a blank canvas and there are no boundaries or limits. I flip through my notebook sometimes and it's just a lot of women and it's just like, self appreciation I think. And without feeling gross or ashamed about it.

What about in your writing, does that come across?

In my writing, I try to channel my Asian American identity a bit more, just because I think even now we are seeing a lot of Asian American creatives and it's like really encouraging, but I think there's still a very dominant stereotype that Asians are very submissive and reticent and quiet. So with my writing, I try to strengthen my Asian American identity and bring that out. 'Cause I just have so many thoughts I think sometimes it's easier for me to write it down than draw it. You can be more descriptive in a more explicit way with writing.

Do you talk about your personal experiences?

I actually began writing fiction first, so like I would write characters, even if they weren't women, they were Asian Americans, and they sort of each had an element of my character within them. And I wrote that while I was back home in California, and I lived in a very diverse community. In Irvine, it's almost 50/50 Asians and white people. I think I drew a lot of inspiration from other friends that were also Asian Americans.

What do you usually write about now?

Now I've been leaning more towards nonfiction, more on social issues. I'm very interested in urban environmentalism, and I think that has a lot of social, economic, and political elements. I've been trying to work my hand around trying to recognize all those elements, and writing helps me figure it all out.

What does being Asian American mean to you?

I think what being Asian American means to me is a journey of embracing the dualities that I have. 

Because I've grown up here in the states for two-thirds of my life, I think it comes with no question that I am those two identities, and it's a constant struggle between balancing which one I want to portray to others. I've come to a realization, that at 21, I'm very proud to be both elements, and I think the Asian side of me, I think that brings out the perspective that I very much respect. I appreciate having traditions practiced in my family household, such as Korean thanksgiving or Chuseok, or paying respects to our ancestors, and having another outlet for different sorts of food. Food brings people together, so I think that's a way to bridge my two identities.

Definitely the American part has opened my eyes to so many people that I would not have seen in Korea. I'm very appreciative that I can have these different things that I can take and utilize and hone into my own identity and my own life, and constantly try to figure myself out, and it's also through art that I try to understand myself. I think being Asian American comes with a lot of responsibilities but also a lot of internal embracing of myself. I'm not even completely at that stage. I don't think I even truly know myself at this point. I don't think anyone does. But I think it's having that innate curiosity, that's what I try to hold onto.

“I think what being Asian American means to me is a journey of embracing the dualities that I have.”

Do you have any specific influences or role models that you look up to?

Woman of color-wise, definitely Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She's beautiful, she's so well-spoken, and she's just so intelligent and I've had the honor of hearing her speak at a conference. You can be the best writer and most intelligent person but if you also possess the talent of delivering it to an audience and explaining yourself, I think that's what really draws me to her. She's dope.

Definitely my mother. Just because she honestly left everything she had known in Korea, and had come with two young girls, and had another baby here not surrounded by any friends or anything, and she had to carve her new chapter here, and we were unaware of the extent of the sacrifices she had to make. She also used to sketch too, and as a child I would flip through her notebook and be so amazed, and I would ask her to teach me. [Do you think her style is similar to yours?] I think she sketched a lot of flowers and portraits, so I think I learned quick sketching techniques from her, but definitely her techniques are channeled in my own art too.

In terms of musicians, there's a dope DJ based in Berlin, check her out, Peggy Gould. She's Korean. She's so talented, very well-spoken. [That could be you next semester!] Oh yeah, disclaimer, I'm going off to Berlin...

We should talk about study abroad! What are you most excited for?

I see Berlin just as this hub of creativity, and fostering so much open-mindedness. I've been to Berlin twice actually, and getting to visit Kreuzberg, the creative district, and seeing the street art was so inspiring and freeing. I hopefully can somehow understand or meet some of the figures in that community. And music-wise, it's going to be a rollercoaster. I'm so stoked.

Do you think you're a part of any Asian community at NYU? Or were you in your childhood?

Back home, I did Taekwondo, I'm actually a black belt with my sister. So it's something I've been doing constantly throughout the years. We were able to bond over that. And because Taekwondo is a very respected Korean sport, I think I was always able to hold onto my identity through that. I was also a part of a Korean American Association from middle school to high school. We would meet up for volunteering. Through that, I was also able to stay true to that element of my identity. I also played a traditional Korean instrument called buk, which is like a drum. It has a very extensive history. So that was also really beneficial for me. I don't think I recognized it at that time though.

Now, being here, I think because there's a constant flow of Asian Americans especially in New York City, at least on campus I don't think I ever felt the need to join a certain Asian interest group. Not because I don't embrace myself, but it's the fact that I'm constantly surrounded by these individuals that I felt very comfortable, and just reassured. I did volunteer with AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) For Equality, it's based in Chinatown. [Is that affiliated with NYU?] No, it's not. It's just something that I was very interested in because I didn't understand the dynamics between Chinatown and the greater New York City and the other residents, and I just wanted to. So I helped with mentoring and tutoring children. Especially after, you know the Jesse Watters World thing? You know that segment they did on Chinatown? After seeing that, I was so infuriated I made sure I volunteered again. [I couldn't even finish it, I was so angry.] That's how I view others that treat my parents. It may not be to that level, not that outwardly disgusting, but it's there.

Are you a part of any creative community at NYU?

I'm a part of Washington Square News, and as the digital director this semester, I was able to work very closely with the creative directors. I was able to explore more of my digital art/design interest. It was a win-win, the fact that I could actually churn out journalistic work coupled with design. And also I'm part of NYU Urban Design, they just started it this semester. I am very interested in urban design, and I think environmentalism is a huge issue now that needs to be embraced on all levels. Regardless if you are in design, if you are in policy, business, everything. We all need to be focused on this because we are all in this together whether we like it or not, the situation calls for it. We need to be responsible and accountable.

“I think environmentalism is a huge issue now that needs to be embraced on all levels...We need to be responsible and accountable.”

I've noticed that a lot of people I know don't seem to care, or don't try to take any action to try to reverse what's been going on. What do you think about how people in our age group deal with the issue of climate change?

I think there are optimistic pockets of people that are trying to be proactive, but I think it extends to culture because in the States, we're so obsessed with consuming, and I don't think people understand the ramifications. If we don't change that mindset, at this point, it's going to be really tough. I think changing people's minds is the hardest thing in any social movement or any change you want to see. People tend to be very stubborn and strong-headed. We truly need to come together. Like the Beatles song.

It's encouraging talking with you, and having friends that are interested, and constantly talking about it. At least that's a starting point, and us being the generation that we need to take upon this responsibility. We're at that age where we can. We're very curious, and I think that's our weapon. I'm optimistic about what we can do, but we gotta walk the talk.

Interview by Elaine Lo

[lunar-stories-blog]

By Yash Shankar

Follow Yash on Instgram @kaalikali24.

[lunar-stories-blog]

“Yellow Child” by Tia Leilani Ramos

In Baudelaire’s “Beauty” her eyes are mirrors

& I realize you must have been his muse

As nothing you see reflects upon yourself.

When I was 10 I stopped hula dancing.

Now when I fuck a guy

I think I learned to fuck when I was a kid 

B/c I spent every Monday in Boulder 

Rolling my hips like a whisk. 

My Mom told me 

That Elvis’ nickname was Elvis Pelvis 

And he made girls faint with his gyrations 

And sometimes I like to imagine 

The kind of sex I’d be having 

If I stopped hula dancing when I was 14 

B/c I was a horny 14 year-old 

Who’d watch sex scenes on Youtube 

But didn’t know how to masturbate yet 

And I wish I was as embarrassed at that  

As I was about being a hula dancer or 

As I am about being Asian.

My mom called me the other day. She said

She’s writing a letter to our old house.

I said that was nice

& that I’d like to read it

& she said she would like that

& now I feel like writing a letter to her

That I will never let her read:

To My Mama Who’s Leaving 21 Blue Heron Drive—

I’m embarrassed when people bring you up

b/c I don’t want them to think you’re uneducated

Or too emotional or a pushover

I thought of you lying

In your California King the morning of your flight

Pushing aside the dog to pick up your phone

b/c Alan knows that you got drunk last night &

That you didn’t pack &

That he’ll be there in half an hour

To take you to the airport.

Did walking on our cold bamboo floors wake you up or

Was it the Colorado sun that always beats

Through our sliding doors?

Maybe that house was an extended metaphor

For your love or

You as a person or

Our family, there’s something poetic

About the fact that it was

Yellow

& that it let in a lot of light.

Did you know I slept w/ my head

Under the covers for 2 years

Because I was sure someone was going to come in

& murder us all

Amelia once asked me where

I felt most comfortable &

I said nowhere

But especially not home.

I watched the debate tonight.

I was ashamed to think

That you probably heard what Trump said

b/c it makes me embarrassed

b/c I don’t want you to think of all the men

That have grabbed my pussy w/ or w/out my permission.

Motherhood is so bodily

How could you have let my hairy lil’ noggin

Destroy your yellow temple?

Did you know that you hurt me sometimes

& I like to catalogue your hurt

So I have a Word document that is called

Shit My Mom Says / You always say

That we can forgive cruel words

But we’ll never forget them

Like how Joe told me that

The good relationships

Are always transactional / I’ve been

Carrying you around for the past couple weeks

as in I think the timbre of your laugh

That is so bright & projected which I hate

Which I was always self-conscious that I had

But when I sit down to write I don’t know

What I want to say or whom I’m saying this to

And I know if you were writing me a poem

You would praise my beauty & say something

You’d think was a compliment like

An entry in Shit My Mom Says:

“I know you’ll be a great poet

Because the great ones are always troubled.”

I’m taking two poetry classes

& I read Baudelaire’s “Beauty” in one of them

& I realized that I make too many I statements

Because every poem I write is just about

How I feel

& what I think

& in my other poetry class

I have to write a poem about you

But how can I write a poem about a woman

Who I love

Who looks just like me

Who makes decisions like I do

Who tells me she gets lost in my eyelashes

Who is ashamed of her own eyelashes

Who had me even though she didn’t want to

Because aren’t your eyes roadside reflectors?

For so long I blamed you for my troubles

For Dad cheating & Alex’s anger

For your stupid laugh

For all the times you never went

To Parent-Teacher conferences

Or wear nice clothes so people

At my rich white private school

Would know that we were rich

& forgive us for not being white.

You told me a story from high school.

You told me that someone approached you,

Told you they had just visited Japan

& that your eyes were so much bigger than theirs

& you laughed & you were proud

Instead of ashamed that someone

Is comparing your body to someone else’s.

You are always comparing your body to mine

As if you wish your body was a mirror

I was using before leaving the house.

Why did you yell when I caught you

Admiring yourself in the mirror?

Naked, your heavy tits

Gazed upon your gaze b/c

O Mama don’t you know

That we are two       Golden Goddesses

With skin as yellow as a streetlamp.

Every morning I stand naked in my mirror

& pinch my pierced nipples

O Mama we are       Asian Princesses

Why are my words

The only ones

That paint us so?

[lunar-stories-blog]

“Every Poet Feels a Lot of Love and Sees a Lot of Beauty”: Tia Leilani Ramos

The first time I met Tia was at a Halloween party at which she was dressed as a Space Cat (exactly as it sounds). We’ve become closer friends over the last few months, and every time I’m with her I feel so fortunate to be able to take part in her kindness, warmth, depth, and passion. She’s a writer-poet, makes damn good fried rice, and she’s not afraid to tell it like it is. We hung out at Tia’s apartment in Gramercy to talk about Asianness, the 2016 presidential election, her family, and poetry. (Note: this interview was conducted on November 10th, 2 days after the election.) -Elaine 

How would you describe your identity as an Asian person?

That’s a big question. Very literally, I am half-Japanese and a quarter Filipino and a quarter white. I was raised a lot more Japanese. I grew up in Colorado, which is a very white state. It’s hard for me to identify culturally as anything besides white American, because I grew up in white America. But I was raised Buddhist, I went to a Japanese Buddhist church, and all of my mom’s family lives in Colorado, so I did have a lot more Japanese culture than Filipino culture, especially because my dad’s side of the family lives in Alaska and Hawaii, so I never see them, and I don’t know if he shares the culture. But it was never present in my life. So I was just Japanese in my childhood. And there was a transition where I was very conscious of how white Colorado was, and then I was like, no, I am white.

How old do you think you were when you realized that?

I think it was when I went to private school, because I went to public school until 5th grade. So 6th grade, I started at a private school, and everyone was white. And rich. So it seemed like the prettier and richer you were, the more popular you were. So it really gave me this complex. I feel like everyone knows that–if you’re pretty and white, you have it set. Especially in high school. And middle school.

I think it was different in elementary school because my best friend growing up was Korean. But we went to different schools in middle and high school, so I didn’t have her anymore. So once I lost that, it was me being very self-aware that I was looked at differently. I can’t remember one moment in elementary school where my race became in the picture ever. It was definitely as soon as I changed schools. It was the first thing people noticed and the first thing they talked about.

What would they say?

A lot of jokes. One really stuck in my mind because one of my best friends said it. It’s, how do you blind an Asian person? And then you say, with floss. Just shit like that. I was the token Asian. In high school, it changed to these microaggressions, like, you’re so pretty for an Asian person. Like fuck you. I hope those people realize that they fucking suck. I’m sorry, that was really aggressive. I’m just very bitter…that gave me a huge self-esteem complex.

And insecurity…

Yeah. And I feel like my brother got it even worse, because he just physically looks more Asian than me. So people would always be like, are your eyes closed? Or, whatever, open your eyes. That’s a thing. I just don’t understand that. It’s this weird thing when you’re comparing your body to someone else’s, and your body is worse than mine. There’s something different about you and it’s worse.

“The conversation always seems to be with a black person talking about their blackness, which I think is very beautiful and I think talking about that is its own entity, but I feel like there needs to be a separate one for talking about Asianness ‘cause I feel like it’s one of those things that’s not talked about, ever.”

How do you think you changed now from growing up in that environment? Where are you at now?

It was different coming here because for the first time, I would be in a room and I wouldn’t be the only non-White person. It was very, very different and very refreshing. I remember the amount of Asian people living on my floor freshman year and it was amazing. It was never like, oh there are a lot of Asian people here. It was just the norm. People just weren’t acknowledging it anymore, where I felt in high school people were always acknowledging it.

I feel like I’ve become a lot angrier recently. Now it’s starting to manifest itself in my poetry. Where I feel like all of my poems now have to be about my body and being Asian. Because those two things seem very connected.

Did you write poetry in high school?

(laughs) I very very casually wrote poetry in high school, but it started after I graduated high school, the summer before freshman year because my boyfriend at the time, his family moved to Austin, so I was just really sad and he really loved poetry and he was getting me into poetry so it seemed like an intimate way of expressing how much I missed him. Poetry was his thing. And so my way of communicating with him was through that. That's how I started writing poetry. For a boy. (laughs) And then I took a creative writing class, and it was the best thing ever.

How do you see yourself as a creative in terms of what kind of art you make? Do you see yourself as an artist or a poet or writer, or…?

I identify as a poet, though I feel like lately I need to broaden it to writer because I feel like I’ve been very interested in the nonfiction genre and I really want to get more into that. Because I feel like it does relate to the whole race thing where you can write a lot of really good nonfiction because recently, especially in slam, there have been a lot more poets who talk about race. Because historically, poetry is white males. Like, everyone we studied in high school was white men and then Emily Dickinson. There’s one female poet in the world, and her name is Emily Dickinson, and she uses dashes.

I got really into studying women poets when I started college because someone told me that I didn’t study enough women poetry and that’s dumb because I’m a woman and I was like, you’re right. I feel like I don’t watch a lot of slam, but what I do watch is a lot about race. But the conversation always seems to be with a black person talking about their blackness, which I think is very beautiful and I think talking about that is its own entity, but I feel like there needs to be a separate one for talking about Asianness ‘cause I feel like it’s one of those things that’s not talked about, ever. I feel like part of it is, you look at the demographics for voting and it was like white people, black people, and Latino people. 

All the articles too, it’s always talking about which group to appeal to and it’s always white, black, Latino.

Yeah, it’s like, where are we? It doesn’t make sense since there’s such a large population of Asian people in this country, especially on the west coast. And there are a lot of Asian people in New York. It feels like we, in certain aspects, are noticed but at the same time in a bad way. People look at you and they need to acknowledge your race and they think it’s something they’re allowed to do.

“It feels like we, in certain aspects, are noticed but at the same time in a bad way. People look at you and they need to acknowledge your race and they think it’s something they’re allowed to do.”

Whereas, you would never look at a black person and acknowledge their race. Like in this country we learned that that’s something you can’t do, but we can be racist towards an Asian person or make a crude joke about Asian people and it’s fine.

So would you view how your incorporate your background into your poetry as an obligation, or is that something that happens naturally?

It started as something that I had always wanted to do and I never knew how to do it. And I don’t think I fully accomplished it until I wrote this one poem that was about my mom, because I couldn’t talk about my mom without talking about being Asian and my body. It’s about my mom, my racial identity, it’s about sexuality and my body. And I felt like that was the first time I could really talk about it. And now it kinda feels like it’s my obligation to talk more about it. I never had something like that before.

Like, there’s one Asian poet who’s pretty well known. Her name is Cathy Park Hong, but she doesn’t really write about identity. It’s not like confessional poetry where it’s about herself. And there’s also Kimiko Hahn, who’s also an Asian poet but she doesn’t really write about Asian identity so I feel like it’s something that needs to be talked about, especially in poetry. 

How has this election affected you personally?

When I go on Facebook now, everyone is very liberal, partially because I do unfriend people who are Trump supporters. I know it might be immature, I'm aware I can't just shut people out because I don't agree with them, and I'm aware it's not doing anyone any good to just hate people who voted for Trump, but where I am currently is exactly that. I feel so much anger and so much hurt that people out there just turned a blind eye to the things that Trump said about women, people of color, Muslims. You are participating in racism and sexism by voting for Trump. And I don't care if you voted for Trump for other reasons, but the fact that you could condone language that Trump has used, I cannot forgive you.

I'm just angry. And I don't want to forgive people. I just want to yell. I just want to like, fucking yell at people. And just say 'fuck you' to their faces. I'm writing a poem right now that's based off of Allen Ginsberg's “America” and it's a lot of anger. And it's a lot of really aggressive language. But that's just how I feel right now. If you aren't concerned with this election, if you have gotten over it after a day, then I think you are part of the problem. You need to feel that anger towards the racism and towards the sexism.

I feel like I'm very upset at a lot of people I'm very close with because they haven't had the same reaction as me. Like, my family. I'm gonna write them a strong worded email. I love them so much and they're amazing people but I do feel this very strong resentment towards them right now.

I think that’s even harder, when people you love and who you thought loved and cared about you support this kind of rhetoric and this kind of hate speech.

I had this conversation with my dad, who’s a Republican, before the election. I saw him right after the video of Trump came out saying “grab them by the pussy.” And I was like, I am at this perfect age where I am young but an adult. You can't control what happens to me anymore, and you can't control these external forces. How does that make you feel that you've raised a daughter in this world where a man can say something so suggestive and he could've said that towards me? How can you not be absolutely disgusted by that? It felt like my dad did not respect who I was or my body.

Have you talked to your parents since the election?

They were like, this just seems like a big deal because this was your first election that you voted it. And it was like, no, you don’t understand what this is going to do to our culture and our country. It’s hard because they were both born in the sixties–they both grew up in a time that was very sexist and racist. And that was just the norm. And then it got better. But for me, we have progressed so much from that time.

And then just Mike Pence. Which is the worst part, everyone’s like impeach Donald Trump! But if you impeach him, Mike Pence is president. And it sucks that a lot of people out there have been signing petitions that are like, make Hillary the president! But I just feel like that’s giving people such false hope, you know? I just don’t think it’ll happen.

I want to go to D.C. to protest his inauguration, and I asked one of my NYU friends if he would want to go with me and he was like, I don't think that's the answer. Democracy will fix everything. Which just like...no! Democracy got us into this problem. If you don't wanna protest, that's not your thing, I don't give a shit, that's fine, I understand that some people don't want to protest. And I don't think lesser of them if they don't, but if your excuse is democracy will fix it, I just...no. I don't respect that opinion. It just sounds like a copout. Like someone who doesn't want to take action, like someone who just wants to passively sit there. And let the world slowly burn.

How do you feel about how people are going back to life as usual and how we can heal from this in a way that’s not just kind of sidestepping it and getting over it?

I don't understand how people on the second day are fine. It's still very much on my mind, every new person I see, we need to just look each other in the eye and acknowledge that we're both hurting. We were talking about this with our classmates, and one of them was saying that he thinks a really incredible counterculture movement will arise from this, and I completely agree with him.

Just talking about it with my friends who are people who share the same views as me is not going to do anything, but I feel like trying to channel this energy and put it into my poetry, I think that will do something else. Just because there is something very public about writing poetry. And poetry has been very political historically.

Do you think all art is political?  

Yes. Because it's always subverting some kind of rule, or some kind of movement. Every movement is subverting what the movement before them did. Even if it's just language. There's this one book that's written and it doesn't use the vowel E. That is even political. Because that restriction, that really tight restriction it's putting on itself, it's subverting some kind of language norm.

“I think our anger is how we relate. Our anger, and our passion. The way we speak. I feel like we’re both really aggressive speakers. We’re very loud sometimes. And we like to provoke people.”

What do you think it is about poetry that makes it so powerful?

Its length. I feel like if you can say something as short as you can, there is just something that makes it stronger. Just succinctly saying something. [Elaine: The denseness of the words.] Yeah. And poetry is extremely intentional because it’s so short. Every word is there for a reason. So I think that also gives it its strength. You know every word is doing work. Whereas in a novel it’s more about the grander picture. But in poetry, it’s the grander picture, it’s the sentence, it’s the word, it’s the punctuation.

Who are the people you look up to in poetry? Do you have any particular influences, or people you know in person?

It changes on the day. I really do love my current teacher, Rachel Zucker. I read her first before I ever met her. And I love her style. She's a great writer. She's a very outspoken feminist. I think she's a doula. She has this one video of her giving a water birth, like literally birthing her son. And se's just like, I know this is propaganda, this has millions of views, like, she's aware that she's vocal, she's always telling us, fuck the institution, fuck NYU.

Allen Ginsberg. I've always really loved Allen Ginsberg. I've loved him since high school. And that whole beat generation. There's something very romantic about it all. Even though they were all just fucked up all the time.

I have one friend, Ahmed. I stole a writing style from him. He uses the ampersand all the time. So I feel like, ever since I read his poetry I only use ampersands.

My mom is my idol. But she doesn't write.

In what way is she your idol?

My mom is like me, but she’s a lot more compassionate. Her impulse is just to love and care for people, where I feel like sometimes my impulse is just to hate people. But my mom would never do that. She’s a very generous person. Morally, she’s just perfect.

What kind of political change or message are you trying to create or get across with your work?

I feel like right now, I'm at this stage where I want to normalize the body. Not just seeing someone naked, I feel like that's to an extent being normalized right now, especially with visual art. But the functions of the body. Just the things that you're embarrassed to talk about. You talk about sex, but you don't talk about masturbation. Stuff like that. I just feel like, there's certain things that everyone does. And no one wants to talk about it. And there's this weird shame with your body and I felt a lot of shame with my body growing up.

Even just like going back to the Asianness thing. Shame about having Asian features. I feel like a lot of things I write now are just a lot of things about the body. It's easier for me to talk about the body than it is to talk about being Asian. I think because just talking about being Asian is a lot more literal, whereas the body can be a lot more metaphorical. So I'm just trying to figure out a way in which to talk about it.

I'm really trying to find a way to talk about mental disorders as well because I'm bipolar, so it's something that I really want to talk about, but it's difficult to talk about, especially because there is such a stigma around it. I guess those are the things I want to talk about, because I feel like they're the things I need to talk about. Because before I feel like all my poetry was just about, I am sad! I love a boy! (laughs) You know? And that's just boring. [Elaine: And it’s not who you are. Or like, it’s only one part of you.] Yeah, and when you talk about yourself it’s like, completely unrelatable but still relatable. You’re creating such a perfect portrait of yourself that’s so idiosyncratic but people can still relate to it. That is what I’m interested in. Not a lot of people are bipolar but there are a lot of people out there who have depression or have some kind of anxiety and just talking about mental illness more openly, they can relate to it. The shame of having that or the secrecy behind it, I don’t know.

You’ve told me before that you always like to talk about your feelings, and you like being very open with everything.

I love talking about my feelings. I love talking about myself. Not in like a bragging way, but…

I’m a very honest person. I’m the worst liar. Because I can’t lie with my face. So I just don’t lie because of that. So I just talk very openly. Because I think it’s interesting if you just respond honestly towards something, and you’ll always have something new to say if you just look at something and you’re like, this makes me think of this. I feel like that’s my best poetry, where I react so honestly and almost impulsively. Like this is my first thought, and this is a genuine thought. I don’t like to bottle things up, because when I bottle things up I just get very quiet and kind of implode, and that’s not healthy. I guess the way I talk very much relates to my poetry.

How do you see that you fit into an Asian community? Or do you, at all?

I did when I was little when I went to a Buddhist temple. I went through this phase where I was like, I don’t want to go anymore, it just makes me more different, and then I went through this other phase where I got super into religion and I was like, everyone is just like, here to socialize. I mean, it was a community, and that’s why people went, it was something they were raised with, whereas my point of view was much more objective and it was like you can only go here if you believe and practice in what you learn.

So I guess what I mean, other people who were raised Buddhist I do feel a community with them, I feel like there’s nothing at NYU where I’m like, yes, this is my Asian community. I guess I do have Asian friends and I guess that can be my community, but there’s nothing structured.

Do you wish you had that kind of structure?

I do. I don’t know. I feel like it has to go back to shame again. I was ashamed of having an Asian community growing up. 

Even if we’re not talking about race, it would just be nice to sit in a room where everyone’s Asian and it’s fine, no one’s talking about it.

How have your parents responded to your poetry? Are they supportive of it?

They’re very supportive of it. I’ve shared one poem with my mom. And it was about her family. And about her culture. My mom is such a wonderful person. She’s such a softie. Everything I say to her just makes her cry. She’s always just like, Tia, you’re so sweet! And I’m like, thank you, I know. (Laughs) Yeah. So I shared that with her and she was like, this was so beautiful, I cried!

But a lot of my poetry is, part of me thinks that my parents won’t understand because I feel like you need to have a certain way of reading to read poetry. So part of me feels like if I ever shared my poetry with my parents they’d never understand…and then the more explicit poetry I write is just like, I don’t want you to read this, where I’m talking about like, sex or my body or me being naked, makes it uncomfortable. They’ve obviously seen me naked before…but it’s in a different way. There is a self-consciousness when it comes to my parents. But they are supportive of me just because they know what really makes me happy and that’s important to them.

On the flip side of how do you fit into an Asian community, how do you think you fit into the poet or writing community or artist community?

I don’t know. That’s hard. I’m just thinking back to my creative writing class on Wednesday–it was 9:30 in the morning so it was the first thing we did that day after we learned about the election. And I just like to think of the artistic temperament. Everyone was crying and silent and refusing to speak. I feel like there’s certain kind of way of carrying yourself when you think that your words carry more weight almost, like you just think what you have to say is more important so when you’re silent you feel like your silence is more important. At least that’s what it felt like in that class.

But I guess more largely I guess I feel like I fit into a poet community because I feel like I have an agenda. And I feel like every poet has an agenda. Just a kind of love. I feel like every poet feels a lot of love and sees a lot of beauty. And I don’t know a lot of poets. I have one friend, I work with her, and she’s going to grad school for poetry so there’s an establishment around her and I’m trying to think of what we have in common. Our anger. I think our anger is how we relate. Our anger, and our passion. The way we speak. I feel like we’re both really aggressive speakers. We’re very loud sometimes. And we like to provoke people.

My friends in high school always say that I have no volume control. [Elaine: My mom says that about me. She’s like, we’re in public, you need to lower your voice.] I remember in choir in high school, people would always be like, Tia, you don’t understand how loud you are when you sing. You need to be more self-aware.

Read Tia’s poem “Yellow Child” here.

Interview by Elaine Lo and Amy Ni