A visual essay on motherhood, generational trauma, and choices. Published in NYT Opinion. Read here
Illustration for the cover of The Washington Post Magazine about the rise of the role of State Secretary of State. Read here
A piece based on Juzo Itami’s film Tampopo (1985)
Concept illustration based on Jesse Armstrong’s Succession.
Two illustrations for a story on The Marshall Project / VQR about how a formerly incarcerated individual survived solitary confinement and found their ‘bid’. Read story here
An illustration for a poem published on the Los Angeles Times about hope and anxiety and moving forward despite it all. Read here
For The New York Times Opinion: on an essay about how the Supreme Court may curb efforts to regulate carbon pollution. Read here
“Rocking the Boat” is a video narrative made in collaboration with Think!Chinatown for their annual Art of Storytelling series. This story, told by Yee Ling Poon, is about staying loud out of love for family and community. Video link to come.
Illustration for a story on the LA Times about a mother’s grief after losing her baby daughter
made in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade
Personal work based on Farhad Manjoo’s essay on The New York Times. This illustration was a chosen winner for the American Illustration 40 archive
An illustration for a personal essay on the meaning of home and self:
Every time I come home to LA a peculiar sadness hangs over me. Describing the feeling is like trying to catch smoke, but it feels solid and visceral when I drive on those characteristically wide highways, sprawling outlets blurring past in my periphery. I live 5 miles away from the mall that was in Back to the Future, but the magic that Marty McFly bestowed on this place as he leapt through time is long gone.
I remember when “home” still had that spark, when it was my only world and my mind was sheltered but content. I moved, expecting my definition of home to simply expand. But becoming enamored with a new place had an unexpected cost, a sneaking sense of rootlessness signaling that I’ve outgrown “home” . It grew stronger every year until I could barely recognize “home”. Everything was familiar – the roads, the buildings, the people – except the person I was when my love for those things was unburdened by the weight of Growing Up Elsewhere.
I know what infatuation with Los Angeles looks like. Friends who visit give me a taste of it, an ephemeral, shining visage of the city. For a moment, I get an inkling of what this place could be, but it evaporates as soon as they leave, and I am once again shackled by the shell of a past life.
After spending almost a year at home, I’m leaving. But my relief and anticipation is mired with a sad appreciation of everything I’ve endured here over the past months. It’s a place that continues to welcome and provide for me to no end, a love I’m not able to return fully. Not now, but someday, maybe, I’ll find a way to give back in earnest..
Based on the Bodies podcast episode about painful sex due to birth control pills, and a longstanding unwillingness in the medical industry to understand how women's bodies react to them.
A poster concept for Chungking Express, a Wong Kar Wai film about chance encounters, loneliness, and unrequited love
an animated piece based on "Escaping Into the Crossword Puzzle," an essay by Anna Shechtman about the parallels between her affinity for puzzle creation and her eating disorder. Both enable her to exercise control over her life, visualized by someone who traps herself into her own puzzles, and by extension, into a rigid way of thinking (reinforced by the measuring tape forming the grid). The infinite loop showcases this process as an endless cycle of her own creation, which she finds hard to break. View animation here
"’Crossword-puzzle constructor,’ I found, was an uncannily compatible identity-container. She must be disciplined, I imagined people thinking. A little obsessive, maybe—but the cultural residue of female hysteria, a century later, might have you convinced that this simply meant ‘adorable.’ And, without a doubt, she must be smart...
My war with my body at a temporary ceasefire, I escaped into an abstract matrix of letters and words. The simple fifteen-by-fifteen-square grid gave order to my racing thoughts and offered a replacement high for that of starvation. If, by the dumb logic of my eating disorder, I was losing something special about myself by gaining weight, I was bolstering my self-esteem by creating crosswords, something I knew to be difficult, precocious, and exceptional."
An exploration of self-compassion and what it means to continue after unintentionally inflicting pain on those you care about. This series was a chosen winner for the American Illustration 41 Archive.
This was originally based on an episode about the challenges of menopause from a great and emotional podcast I love called “Bodies”. I was reminded of women in my life who often felt they had to silently endure changes in their bodies, minimizing needs and rendering their struggles invisible to others. In this piece, I wanted to emphasize how these transformations shouldn’t be stowed away. They should instead be visibly supported through all their highs and lows, and honored as a measure of immense strength and ultimately positive change.
Based on Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go
on burnout and emotional turmoil