Ari Laurel’s work has appeared in Passages North, Ninth Letter, The Conium Review, Yellow Chair, Bitch Media, The Toast, Quartz, Duende, Kartika Review and Hyphen. She was featured in the 2015 Kearny Street Workshop APAture Festival and was a 2012 finalist for the PEN/USA Emerging Voices Fellowship.
After generations of erasure, stereotyping and yellowface, APIA audiences may feel something visceral when we see other Asian Americans on screen. Most of the stories about us that have managed to make it through the Hollywood machine have been exoticizing, troubling and indicative of the historical violence that Asians and Asian Americans have endured at the hands of white supremacy.
What is going on at Standing Rock right now is historic, and if you need a moment to catch up, here’s your chance. Not unlike the Keystone XL proposal, The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is comparable in length, and would begin at the border of Eastern Montana, cutting through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. If built, the pipeline will transport up to 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily. For the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe this is simply the latest slight against tribal lands and the people who inhabit them.
Writer, comedian, performance artist, actor, and master seamstress, Kristina Wong summons the energy of a full cast in her latest one-woman show, "Wong Street Journal," interacting with a set she sewed entirely by hand. Much like her previous works, “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Asian Vaginas End Racism,” “Wong Street Journal” promises whip smart social commentary, a deep earnestness underneath LA-bred irony, and outrageous humor.
Here are the five films from Asian or Asian American filmmakers that received awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival.
Here is Part 2 of our rundown of Sundance's films made by Asian or Asian American filmmakers.
How studying kung-fu helped Ari Laurel think about her activism and identity, and ultimately helped her move on to the next chapter of her life.