It’s that time of year where I do a circle jerk of one and count up all the things I’ve done this year so I feel like a somebody.
** No photos or videos this year because I can’t figure out how to embed either from the web in this new WordPress update.If you know how to do this, let me know.
Then I ran for office and won. I then ran to be an elected representative of Koreatown Los Angeles. This time my strategy was to wave down as many votes as possible in the street on election day. Having a Korean-passing face helped a lot. With a fraction of the effort from the last election, I won and am now the Elected Representative of Subdistrict 5 Wilshire Center Koreatown Neighborhood Council. My term is two years.
I won the 2019 Center Theater Group Sherwood Award! I’ve applied for this coveted honor that celebrates an innovative theater maker in Los Angeles for the last ten years. I finally got it! It was hugely validating and a great boost for me in this new “Kristina Wong for Public Office” project. Here was my acceptance speech at the Ovation Awards.
We shot a second season of Radical Cram School! Trolls be damned! We shot another season of my comedic progressive web series for kids! We will have our premiere party in January. I can’t wait to roll it out on the web. Season 1 is still here.
We voted to abolished ICE (a largely SYMBOLIC vote because as it turns out neighborhood councils can’t dismantle federal agencies). Yes, as an elected representative (who is simultaneously a performance artist) I do go to monthly Neighborhood Council Meetings and do actual work which includes sitting on the Planning Housing Land Use and Transportation Committee. My fellow board member Angie Brown and I co-wrote a Community Impact Statement to support the Abolition of ICE. We gathered stakeholders to speak at the meeting and our board voted to support it.
Wrote and shot videos to support Garment Workers and #LivingWageNow. Director Jenessa Joffe and I were commissioned to write and create viral videos which will come out in the next few months to support garment worker rights worldwide. We wrote three episodes and shot them a couple weeks ago! Look for these to roll out in a few months!
I was honored by OCA-GLA with an “Image Award”! I finally got one of those plexiglass awards for my work in “Achievement in Arts and Advocacy!” Thanks OCA!
I was hired to write an immersive play! I switched gears in my head for a couple months as I wrote the script for “Mad Hatter’s Gin and Tea Party”– the most famous chapter from Alice in Wonderland as a live immersive cocktails experience. I also did some consulting on the project and helped create a structure where Los Angeles actors would get paid a living wage on the project. Most shows sold out even before we opened and show grossed over $400k in sales over the run!
I did a 12 week theater workshop and created a performance with Undocumented Immigrants. Thanks to an Artist-in-Residence grant from the Deparment of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles, I did my second Artist-in-Residence project with the Dream Resource Center.
So many shows and tours! Austin, TX! Columbus, OH! Rutgers University in New Jersey! Skidmore College in NY!
I finally got an acting reel together and a new theatrical agent! My friend Wayne helped me edit together this acting reel and I signed with Beverly Hecht Agency!
Radical Cram School had screenings all over the country and WON AN AWARD! San Francisco! Austin! and NYC! We won the “Audience Award” at the Austin Asian American International Film Festival! And we were nominated for “Best Episodic Series” by the NY Asian American International Film Festival. We lost to a series about a dominatrix, so I’m not sure how else we could have beat them short of breaking the law.
I found two new communities I love. I started attending API Rise meetings. They are a support group for formerly incarcerated Asian Pacific Islanders . Now I want to help them produce a podcast. If anyone wants to help do this with me, PLEASE STEP UP.
I also discovered a Food Bank supermarket called World Harvest Food Bank adjacent to my neighborhood which diverts a ton of fresh healthy food waste from the landfill and you can get a giant grocery cart of groceries for $40 (or 4 hours of volunteer work). I love innovative economic models like this and now I want all of LA to know it’s possible to have good food and not go broke! I will be only spending $50/month or less next year for groceries in the #50buckgrocerychallenge. You can follow my Instagram to see how that all goes…. Hopefully I won’t be dead by March.
I was on some fancy panels. I was on a panel called “Asian American Women who are Changing the Face of Media” that the UCLA Luskin Center and UCLA Asian American Studies put on. Here’s an article on it.
Went to Artist Campaign School! I made life long friends at this special intensive training that teaches artists how to run and win for local office. This was in Chicago!
Spent more time in LA this year and got way more into cooking! “Kristina Wong for Public Office” is a rare show that I’ve developed mostly in Los Angeles… that means I was on the road a lot less this year. Which means that it took months for me to ease into my kitchen and realize “I’ve been afraid of big commitment cooking.” In January I will be doing VEGANUARY where I do an all plant based diet. I am also now the owner of several Instant Pots and all sorts of weird cooking things that will make delicious meals!
Had major dental surgery… paid it off with POSHMARK. Yes, I’m still running a flea market out of my bedroom (ie I have a very active Poshmark hustle). Last year when I was getting heavily trolled, I worried that I actually might get chased into economic armagedon out of my already teetering art career. So I started to look at ways I could earn income in the event I got blacklisted off the planet. Resale was one thing that came up up as an option. But luckily, the trolls didn’t win but did pay off my wisdom teeth removal with the Poshmark funds.
Now my resale obsession is slowly getting replaced by my interest in food and cooking. I’m ok with that. I need my space back! I sold close to 490 items this year and net almost $6000 in sales! And bonus, the trolls haven’t stopped my performance art career!
I was a funny person. I laughed a lot. I was just unhappy a lot of the time. KRISTINA WONG· MAY 15, 2014
When I told my white friend about how my grandmother’s TV remote control is mummified in plastic wrap and how she’s superstitious about food passing through certain doors in the house, he asked, “Does she have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?”
I laughed, “Haha! No way! She’s just Chinese!”
I’m a third generation Chinese American. In my 20s, I was tested for Attention Deficit Disorder. Some of the criteria indicating that I was a candidate for ADD made me immediately suspicious of how any mental illness is gauged and how culturally competent the test makers are.
Does crying for weeks on end that I didn’t get into UC Berkeley make me prone to depression or was I just a high school drama queen? Does being a disorganized overachiever constitute Attention Deficit Disorder or was I just somebody with a lot of goals? Does screaming at my guests to take their shoes off in my house mean I have OCD or that I’m just Chinese?
I believed for many years, and even now, that the misery of my life was not a diagnosable medical disorder, but was just about being a Chinese American navigating life in the Western World whilst being held to unrealistically high expectations (bilingual concert pianist brain surgeon anyone?).
I was never raised to be happy as much as I was raised to be successful. And that success usually came in specific quantifiable terms like having a well-paying job, a medical degree from a reputable school, or marrying a Chinese bilingual doctor husband. It was inferred that once I had all those successes, I’d be secure in life, and that security was going to make me happy.
I won’t lie. Getting good grades, winning trophies, and stacking a long list of accomplishments on my college application made me feel good because it meant I had avoided my parents’ idea of a failure. But most of the time, the road to the seemingly unattainable, chasing a dream that wasn’t really mine, felt so totally miserable and pointless.
I also believed life was supposed to be miserable — because hard work is miserable. Had my parents and immigrant grandparents not worked through their misery, I wouldn’t have the opportunities that I do today. Passing that legacy of misery onto your kids — that guilt we carry is what makes us work harder. Bucking up and moving forward through that misery without complaining — this is the Chinese way.
But I always knew something was off. The misery was often beyond bearable. By the time I finished college, I witnessed and experienced violence that I didn’t think I could speak against (bear through the misery, remember?). I could go into detail about the specifics of these violent moments, but as much of an oversharer as I am, still can’t bring myself to describe them in detail on the Internet. Every “failure” carried with it the fate of my life. Every time I detracted from the path towards “success,” I felt so incredibly alone.
I did confide in some friends about the agony of living, because I didn’t want it to be agonizing any longer. My non-Asian friends would tell me: “F**k how you were raised. Do your own thing.” To me, choosing a different path meant flunking out of school and disowning my parents. My Asian friends listened but gave no tangible answers. Perhaps they were quietly navigating their own misery.
I didn’t identify with pop culture images of “depressed people.” Rock stars with public platforms to lash out publicly, and a stable of emo fans wanting to emulate them. Celebrities addicted to painkillers enabled by paparazzi cameras, or psychology brochures featuring stock images of white women looking forlorn against rain-specked windows. None of those images were me — I was a silly, smiley, jokey person. I was a funny person. I laughed a lot. I was just unhappy a lot of the time.
Chinese people didn’t see therapists. Spend $100 to tell a stranger your problems? Are you crazy? Why, yes, maybe I am. But I don’t know because my mom won’t give me the money to see a shrink. Western psychology and “seeing a therapist” (especially one that you have to pay megabucks by the hour to tell your secrets to) is still a completely foreign concept to people of my parents’ generation who believed seeing a therapist would prevent you from getting a job. And mind you, my parents were born in America.
I ran across a statistic in 2004 that reported Asian American women as having some of the highest rates of suicide in this country. I decided I would make a theater show about it and call it “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” When I received major arts grant funding to make it, my mother said, “I’m so proud of you. Just don’t talk about me or the family in your show.”
Doing a show about Asian American depression without mentioning your mother is like making a porno movie without sex. A curious thing happened when I announced in 2005 that I was “working on a show about depression and suicide.” A lot of women came out of nowhere to tell me that they had been depressed and contemplated suicide. These were total strangers who found me by email — college professors and women I had known as professionals, all telling me things I had not imagined could be shared.
Every time a woman shares her story with me, I think the same: Where were you when I was younger? How would have things been different if we were there for each other?
I’ve toured “Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for seven years now. That’s way too long to tour a funny show about something so depressing. It’s been an amazing ride, but I would never wish for anybody to take on what I did. I was not ready for it and what I had to face to make it. For many years I was known as “Kristina Wong who does that depression show.”
My parents have still convinced themselves the show is an elaborate work of fiction drawn completely from my imagination and created out of the pure selfless desire to help others. That’s how deep the denial around the issue of depression runs in my family. But I have also learned that denial is an amazing coping mechanism, until it doesn’t work anymore.
Very few people will tell you the step-by-step ways to be brave in your own body.
Note: This was an essay that was originally published May 14, 2014 by xoJane which is no longer in existence. Because this essay was meaningful to a lot of folks when it was first published, I’ve republished it here in its entirety as it appeared then.
2018 like 2017 was a rough freaking year. My eyebrows are inexplicably missing of late (likely from stress). I couldn’t stop looking at pictures of buffets today (Google says that maybe food fixation is about an eating disorder or anxiety). And a bunch of beloved people in my community passed this year. And in the last few months I had an unimaginable number of stressful situations charge at me.
I look at pics of me from January and now and I have aged… Oh god, how much I’ve aged.
But I have some great memories from this year and despite the exhaustion, that’s what I’m taking with me.
Here’s a look at 17 Highlights of 2018:
1. I was a presented by the US Consulate in Nigeria!
By a chance recommendation, I was invited to perform The Wong Street Journal at the Lagos Theater Festival in Nigeria in February, presented by the US Consulate. Nigeria is a five hour flight from Uganda, where the show was researched. Lagos is so incredibly vibrant, filled with fantastic people. Because I was presented by the US Consulate, I was treated like a CELEBRITY. I met the most famous comedians, actors and change makers in Lagos. In the picture above from left to right is Abisoye A. Akinfolarin (CNN Heroes Nominee), Chigul (comedian and actress who was on a billboard outside my hotel!), Mandy Uzonitsha (Nigeria’s grandmother of stand-up comedy), Basketmouth (Hella famous comedian) and Ali Baba (godfather of Nigeria’s stand-up comedy scene).
2. I was on late night television in Nigeria!
I had such a good time in Nigeria. Every hour was packed. We were shuttled around in an armored car, sometimes with an armed guard! I was on a lot of radio including this podcast with My Africa Podcast.
And I went to fancy parties at the Consulate General’s home where I used cocktail napkins that had the United States Government seal on them!
[youtube]https://youtu.be/UOYmeiZI4JY[/youtube]
I was on Nigeria’s version of the Daily Show hosted by Okey Bakassi. You can read about this first show in the New Yorker.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/RnnU8_NRjvo[/youtube]
And literally, hours before I left town, I squeezed in one late night appearance on Ali Baba’s “Seriously Speaking”. We had come from watching Femi Kuti perform at the New Africa Shrine where he touched my finger!
3. I returned to Uganda where I made music videos!
[youtube]https://youtu.be/EPHHAofU2jc[/youtube]
After five years of making and touring The Wong Street Journal, I returned back to Gulu, Uganda– where the stories first began. I reunited with the folks I had met there– Nerio Badman and the other rappers on my Mzungu Price Album. I went to Nerio’s home village. We shot THREE music videos. (We shot four actually, but I will never let the fourth video see the light of day). And it felt like a full circle way to come back to a story I’ve lived aloud in front of audiences over the last three years. We also recorded a rap song called “Nigerian Prince” that we wrote and recorded in an hour and a half.
4. I was a Dandy Minion in Taylor Mac’s 24 Hour History of American Music.
Because this was a year of extremes, I had the pleasure of being both in an African village and in “Taylor Mac’s 24 Hour History of American Music” in the same week. If you don’t know MacArthur Genius Taylor Mac or of this 24 hour drag-stravaganza performance, you aren’t living. As someone who makes work that can tour, it was amazing to be part of something so long and extravagant.
5. I helped Asian American women talk about sex and it was like for the greater good of social science!
I’m beginning to see how being a performance artist can actually be useful for more than just exposing my worst. I worked with social science professors to talk about Sexual Health experience with what will hopefully be future focus groups for studies.
6. I launched my newest performance work… “Kristina Wong for Public Office”!
I debated dogs. Opened a campaign headquarters in Chinatown. And gave the most insane campaign speech ever.
[youtube]https://youtu.be/jjpkXyCeIi8[/youtube]
I received the COLA Career Artist Fellowship grant from the City of Los Angeles to create a new work and I decided
7. I launched my web series Radical Cram School!
[youtube]https://youtu.be/aI3voZCASp0[/youtube]
8. I got hate from Nazis and then made this response video!
[youtube]https://youtu.be/ofVNDWvJc28[/youtube]
Turns out Nazis didn’t take to my series very well. But I didn’t let them have the last word.
9. I did this amazing theater project with undocumented immigrants!
Thanks to the Artist-in-Residence Award from the Department of Cultural Affairs Los Angeles, I was able to make this original theater piece with the undocumented community.
10. I am a finalist for the Sherwood Award!
The winner is announced at the end of January. Keep your fingers crossed for me.
11. I was the Performing Artist in Residence at the San Diego Airport!
12. Engagements all over the freaking country!
Arizona! Wyoming! Boston! Knoxville! Portland! Santa Barbara! St. Louis! Miami!
14. I filed to run for an actual elected political office!
15. I’m simultaneously attempting to crowd fund for Season 2 of Radical Cram School.
In the spirit of a year where I’m literally on top of myself, I simultaneously running for Public Office while raising money for my unrelated web series. It’s a lot like how many friend many years ago was hella pregnant while trying to open her cafe in the Castro– I don’t recommend this.
But right now, I’m pretty desperately asking the world to help me meet the bare minimum of $16K in fundraising so I can get the greenlight. We’re going to have more music, more puppets and guest Aunties, Uncles and non-genderconforming mentors join us. Get in on a revolutionary series that will piss off the Nazis!
16. I NET $5000 in sales on Poshmark!
I went a wee bit too far into my resale obsession this year. I sold hundreds of items out of my bedroom. Which yes, also meant that I acquired hundreds of items in my bedroom. It wasn’t so much as profitable as it was as soothing as picking away at a scab, letting it rebleed and then picking at it again. There was this great joy when I could pack something up and send it out of my home forever.
17. I was in a few films and things!
It turns out that there weren’t too many “Get Out the Vote” PSAs for the Asian American community.
WE FREAKING DID IT! We launched a 6 episode web series for kids!
“Radical Cram School” Web Series
is Sesame Street for the Resistance
How do we keep girls of color from internalizing the racist and misogynistic rhetoric amplified by
the election of a presidential bully? How do we empower them to embrace their identities and
become allies to other social movements? “Radical Cram School” is a new web series on
YouTube that seeks answers to these questions through humor and fun. The series title,
“Radical Cram School,” is a social justice twist on the phenomenon of “cram schools” — high
intensity academic tutoring centers frequented by Asian communities.
Hosted by comedian Kristina Wong, the series features nine kids of Asian American heritage,
ages 7 to 11, eight of whom identify as girls and one who identifies as gender fluid. Over 6
unscripted episodes, Kristina and the kids play games, put on a puppet show, and sing the
blues to explore topics such as structural racism, misogyny, identity, and bullying. While the
subject matter skews mature, the kids’ unscripted reactions are hilarious and heartwarming.
Puppeteer Anna Michelle Wang is featured in two episodes with her popular Asian American
puppet character, Hanna Rochelle.
“Radical Cram School” is directed by Jenessa Joffe and produced by Kristina Wong, Jenessa Joffe, Theodore Chao, and Anna Michelle Wang. This series is geared towards kids of color (and grown kids of color), parents and educators who want to engage kids in conversations about identity and social justice, fans of comedy, and activist communities.
You need socially progressive art for your collection and we need to finish this edit on our “Radical Cram School” web series featuring the young Asian American girls (above)!
Let’s make this happen!
All art items were actually used on our set and are the ONLY items like them in existence. Because they have been used on a set there may be characteristic flaws, fingerprints, or dings. But they are all in great and in display-worthy condition.
Suggested Donation prices include US shipping!
*International buyers please contact me for shipping rates.
Make the contribution here and send me your address in the notes so I can mail. If the item is not marked “SOLD” below, it’s still available!
Yuri Kochiyama Poster
Art by Kirby Araullo and Yee Xiong
Dimensions: 37” x 24”
Mounted on Foam Core
Suggested Donation Price: $250/ shipped anywhere in the US
Grace Lee Boggs Poster
Art by Alex Chiu
Dimensions: 32” x 24”
Mounted on Foam Core
Suggested Donation Price: $250/ shipped anywhere in the US
“Resistance Auntie” Poster
Art by Shing Yin Khor
Dimensions: 29” x 24”
Mounted on Foam Core
Suggested Donation Price: $250/ shipped anywhere in the US
“MICROAGGRESSION” Felt Flashcard
Designed by Kristina Wong
Sewn by our Art Department
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 7”x 30”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
“FEMINISM” Felt flashcard
Designed and Sewn by Kristina Wong
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 6” x 25”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
“MISOGYNY” Felt flashcard
Designed and Sewn by Kristina Wong
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 6.5” x 23”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
“INTERSECTIONALITY” Felt flashcard
Designed and Sewn by Kristina Wong
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 5.5” x 28.5”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
“STRUCTURAL RACISM Felt flashcard
Designed and Sewn by Kristina Wong
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 9” x 20.5”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
“GENDER NON-BINARY” Felt flashcard
Designed and Sewn by Kristina Wong
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 10” x 19”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
“OPPRESSION” Felt flashcard
Designed and Sewn by Kristina Wong
Materials: Felt, thread, Cardboard inside
Dimensions: 7” x 28”
Suggested Donation Price: $200/ shipped anywhere in the US
