To resurrect mothers, sisters & selves.
To resurrect mothers, sisters & selves.
Shirley Chen is a writer & performer bridging archival research, oral history, and performance to present Asian Americans who scream out from history. By pumping forgotten historical narratives with the beating heart; fragility; and euphoria that comes with stumbling into adulthood, she reanimates forgotten histories of resilience.
Chen holds a B.A. from Harvard University in Theater, Dance & Media and History & Literature with a focus in Asian American Studies.
I am alive through story; for me, acting and writing are unabashed attempts to carve my own narrative in unfamiliar-familiar worlds, to gather my mothers, sisters, and selves from history and resurrect us on stage and screen. Just as acting breathes life into dead words, my writing does not preserve history.
Instead, I preserve life.