About a year ago, Minnie Ng and I invited Jen Sungshine to share with us not only her history and experience in activism and video production under Love Intersections but her insights about collaborating with other multitalented QTPOC artists as well. From our interview with Jen, we will learn about why collaborations may be the most effective and ethical approach to sharing stories of communities across borders. In this episode, we also will discuss more about the importance of engaging in difficult dialogues and listening with empathy and compassion as creative activists.
As we near the end of season 4, Project Voice will be preparing for its lineup for season 5 (and ANOTHER big surprise coming soon!). If you are interested in being interviewed, please email us at projectvoicepod@gmail.com!
Jen Sungshine speaks for a living, but lives for breathing life into unspoken situations in unusual places. She is a nerdy queer Taiwanese interdisciplinary artist/activist, facilitator, and community mentor based in Vancouver, BC, and the Co-Creative Director and founder of Love Intersections, a media arts collective that cultivate a vision of collaborative filmmaking and relational storytelling. Jen's artistic practice involves learning through unlearning; and instead of calling you out, she wants to call you in, to make artful social change with her. In the audience, she looks for art in your interruption.
Follow Love Intersections:
https://loveintersections.com/
https://www.facebook.com/loveintersections/
https://www.twitter.com/intersectlove
https://www.instagram.com/loveintersections/
Content warning: sexual assault
Years before the online #MeToo movement that took place in October 2017, Yee Xiong filed a civil suit case against her attacker. Determined to bring justice to her case, she bravely held her ground despite the bribery and threats that occurred during the conviction. It was only a few months later that Yee reached out to me to again to share news of her huge win of her lawsuit case. The legal battle lasted for 6 years. According to a NY Times interview, Yee hopes that her victory will send “a very powerful and positive message to the world that people will be held accountable for their actions, no matter how long it takes.”
In this episode, Yee will share with us how she navigated through the legalities of her case and healed herself after the incident. On a larger scale, we also will discuss about how sexual violence is related to immigration rights.
Yee Xiong is a daughter of Hmong refugee parents and an advocate for sexual assault survivors and immigrant rights. She earned her BA in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and works as a community educator at her local rape crisis center in Yolo County. She is passionate about building solidarity among historically oppressed communities through grassroots organizing, women and youth of color empowerment, Southeast Asian and migrant worker issues, and ethnic studies.
Follow Yee on Instagram @yee.speaks!