amanda wan (they/them) is a queer han chinese settler based on the unceded, occupied territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sʔəl̀ilwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. They are a recent graduate of the MA English program at UBC, where their thesis project centered the erotic mediations of the Asiatic in queer Asian diasporic literatures. In particular, they attended to the ambivalence of techno-Orientalist aesthetics in Larissa Lai’s The Tiger Flu and the production of the refugee figure in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. Their thesis, which asks about the im/possibilities of ethical relationality within such eroticized interplays of power, is available to read online at cIRcle.
amanda creates poetry and artwork in the form of zines, illustrations, and published writing in Room Magazine, Augur Magazine, LooseLeaf Magazine, and elsewhere.
They are also the Community Engagement Coordinator at the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program.
Portrait credit: Divya Kaur