GO Magazine's 100 Women We Love showcases a wide range of LGBTQ women (mostly based in the US & Canada) across fields & occupations making a big impact on society. I'm going through the list right now and am happy to see a strong POC presence, including from South Asian backgrounds. Here's a selection (I've added links to the projects quoted):
Gauri Manglik
At 23, Gauri Manglik is already making her mark on the predominantly male tech startup scene. After graduating from NYU, where she majored in computer science, the young entrepreneur quit her job in finance to start her own company. She is now the CEO and co-founder of Fondu, a growing social network for sharing “bite-size restaurant reviews” with friends. [...] “Being a lesbian and an Indian in a leadership role is really cool,“ she says. “I’m proud to bring my unique perspective to the startup scene where a diversity of ideas is important when trying to create innovative solutions. I’m glad I can do this, so that other people can do it too.”
Kim Crosby
Trinidad-born, Toronto-based artist Kim Crosby is a queer survivor, multidisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, facilitator and educator who has plumbed society’s inequalities and transformed her experiences into potent tools for empowerment.[...] Today Crosby is a core member of T-Dot Renaissance, a collective of emerging artists of color; and a part of the nationally touring Les Blues group, an ensemble of black queer folks committed to decolonization through performance. She is the co-founder of The People Project, a movement of queer and trans folks of color toward empowerment through alternative education and activism; and the NYC-based Brown Grrlz Project of “femme of center” individuals. “It's not our differences that separate us, it is our inability to embrace and respect difference,” Crosby affirms. “Freedom does not come at the expense of another group of people. We must fight for each other; it's either all of us or none of us.”
Mariko Tamaki
“Lesbians are superheroes. Everyone knows this,” claims Mariko Tamaki, the Toronto-based author and performer known for injecting her work with autobiographical, queer outsider characters. This energetic artist won critical accolades for her collections of snarky observational essays, True Lies: The Book of Bad Advice and Fake ID; and for her live storytelling at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and on the CBC’s DNTO radio series. [...] Tamaki draws inspiration for her work directly from her own life. “[Lesbians] are the grease that keeps the wheels moving in every arts and activist community,” she tells GO. “I am even more awesome at what I do because I know I am part of an incredible, talented, sexy community. Being a lesbian has set the bar.”
Madeleine Lim
"Art is activism—it’s an important part of any social justice movement. Artists need to be seen as leaders, not just the entertainment,” Madeleine Lim says. When she was 23, Lim fled her native Singapore to escape government persecution. Ten years later, she created and directed Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, a documentary film about queer Asian emigrants that is still banned in Singapore. The film’s impact, and her position as one of few queer women of color on the international film scene, prompted her to found Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP). “I decided that by training other queer and transgender women of color, we could get more films out into the world. If our community creates our own films, then we have honest representations of who we are instead of destructive stereotypes. It empowers us to tell our own stories.”
No comments:
Post a Comment