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CONTRIBUTORS:

Mei Lum (林美) is the 5th generation owner of her family's porcelain business, Wing on Wo, where she also runs the W.O.W. Project, a community initiative using arts and culture to preserve and strengthen Chinatown's creative culture for its future.

Diane Wong (王逸君) is a doctoral candidate at Cornell University, where she writes on race, gender, and resistance to gentrification in Chinatowns. As a writer, educator, and multimedia storyteller, her research stems from a place of revolutionary praxis and deep love for community.

Emily Mock is an educator, cultural programmer, and artist making paper cuts and performative works from paper. Having lived in spaces such as the Outer Sunset, Western Massachusetts, Oxford, Chengdu, and NYC, she is interested in how place and identity frame each other, as well as access to ancestral knowledge and crafts. Inspired by the youth and elder tenant leaders in Manhattan Chinatown from CAAAV and the Chinatown Tenants Union, Emily is working on a paper cut children’s book about a diasporic community of color’s fight against gentrification and displacement.
She coordinates community arts education programs at The Laundromat Project as a Center for Neighborhood Leadership Community Organizing Apprentice. As an educator at the Museum of Chinese in America, Emily gives survey and specialized gallery tours and walks. She holds a BA from Smith College in Art History and Political Science.

Alina Shen grew up and currently lives in Queens, and spends most of her time in Chinatown. You can read more about the summer mapping project here: https://contoursnyc.wordpress.com/

Huiying Bernice Chan 陳慧瑩 is a creative writer, storyteller, aspiring healer, and member of the Chinatown Art Brigade. They are currently exploring how to play with language in poetry, document visions in filmmaking, and live an oceanic life. Huiying’s writing has been published in The Blueshift Journal, Project As[I]Am, and the Asian American Journal of Psychology to name a few. They also self-published Kim Learns to Read, a children’s book based on the true story of a Black Panther. You can read more of their writing and journey around the world at rememberingourlight.wordpress.com

Liz Moy is an artist, cultural organizer, and 5th generation Chinatown New Yorker. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from NYU Steinhardt and is passionate about the intersection of gentrification and cultural production.

Marz Saffore is a member of MTL+ Collective, a group of artists, writers, and educators who combine research and aesthetics in political action. MTL+ Collective founded and facilitates Decolonize This Place, a collaboration between cultural producers and grassroot organizers across struggles and borders. Currently, Marz is an adjunct professor at NYU Steinhardt, and she is preparing to begin her doctoral studies this Fall.

TRANSLATORS:

Pat Lin is a 1st gen american child of the Chinese diaspora dedicated to our collective empowerment through service, community, honesty, exchange, healing & organizing with an anti-oppressive and restorative justice framework. She believes in the innate intelligence intuition and ancient power of all queer & POC people.

Hui Hsin Huang 黃惠欣 was an urban planner, a prosecutor in Taiwan, and is currently studying law in New York. She is interested in different urban histories and cultures from around the world.

Alina Shen grew up and currently lives in Queens, and spends most of her time in Chinatown. You can read more about the summer mapping project here: https://contoursnyc.wordpress.com/

Fei Liu 刘斐 is a New York-based Chinese designer, artist, writer, and DJ exploring digital empathy and the narrative potential of interfaces. She is an adjunct professor at Parsons MFA Design and Technology and previously a Researcher in Residence at NEW INC, and a Digital Solitude fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. She has mid-to-average combined student debt from an undergraduate as well as a master’s degree, with no health insurance, car, or house.

Yixin (Sam) Gong was born and raised in Xiamen, China, and is a curator and researcher based in New York City. He has worked on several non-profit institutions in China and Southeast Asia. Gong studies Art History at Rutgers University.

CHINESE PROOFREADERS:

KahEan Chang was born in Malaysia, and moved to Chinatown NYC when she was 16. She became involved with CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities during high school. As a youth organizer, KahEan organized alongside fellow Chinatown tenants and helped found the Chinatown Tenants Union in 2005.

Mimi Yaw was born and raised in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Mimi became involved with the Chinatown Tenants Union of CAAAV in 2014, when their building received notices from their landlord who was trying to evict tenants and renovate the building. Mimi has since become a tenant leader, and can be found taking photos, playing golf, or snooker.

EDITORS:

The stories of displaced and dislocated communities across the globe form the basis for Tomie Arai’s collaborations with historians, activists and cultural organizations.  In these collaborations, public art, prints and installations are ways for Arai to use the cultural specificity of her experience as an Asian American as a personal space in which to locate broader issues of race, gender and cultural equity; a space in which she believes a glimpse of common ground can be made possible.

ManSee Kong 江敏詩 creates films and videos inspired by stories rooted in grassroots organizing efforts and social movements. She holds an MFA in Film/Directing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and continually strives to evolve her filmmaking skills with interactive, collaborative, and community-driven multimedia methods in an effort to challenge and disrupt conventional narratives.