Kristina Wong’s Pandemic Story: Stitching With Her Aunts


The biggest irony was that I didn’t even wear a mask for the first few weeks I sewed them, because I felt that the mask I was wearing all the time was already a sign to the world: “I’m a stranger. I am an immigrant. I brought the virus here. Come and get me.” With this show, I wanted to find a way to not only tell the story about how we get beaten, beaten, beaten, but also how we survive.

Worried that people might not want to relive the pandemic?

We need to figure out how to visibly see Asian Americans and their culture. During the pandemic, I saw Asian American women not as silent, submissive virus passers-by, but as warriors doing the job of protecting the Americans behind sewing machines. If there is ever a museum about this moment in history, please let it be a small footnote reminding us of our work. And I learned that as an artist of color in particular, I couldn’t wait for someone else to write this footnote, so this show is actually me screaming at people to know how to respect our work.

Up until 2015, your mother was sending newspaper articles with the average salary for careers like doctors and civil servants to try to discourage you from a performing arts career. More supportive now?

When I first started this, my mom called me and said, “You have to stop making these masks; stay inside!” I got really mad at him, but then he totally surprised me – he was like, “Okay, send me some fabric, get me the patterns.” Then he gathered all his friends and got really into it. I think he’s really proud.

Coming to see the show?

He was really scared to come to New York because of hate crimes and the Delta variant, but he and my dad are coming to see the show. I’m really happy to see him and I think he’ll be surprised as he doesn’t know how much is inside. My shows have become my way of having honest conversations with my family from afar – they mostly learn more about me by watching my shows rather than sitting at the dinner table where I lie to them and hide things. And I think they know it!

How much of the show is you in that scene, Kristina Wong, and how much of it playing a character?

This is my big dilemma! I play a character named Kristina Wong who is mostly me but is highly dramatized. Did I really crawl on my stomach to get to the post office? No, but most of the time it felt like life and death.



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