Dawn is a queer trans woman of Thai background, an illustration student and occasional poet. In her creative works and in studies she has been drawn to grapple with various feminisms, oppressions and identities salient to herself and her loved ones - among them transmisogyny, queerphobia, and racism. She dreams of building a career around creative and performance art outreach, education, therapy, and protest around the social justice issues closest to her. Dawn has been on the show before when Thanh Hằng was a host, and whose poetry (as Xen Nha) really helped Dawn find her own voice.
We had a track from Yelris, who performed at TRANSTRVAGANZA organised by Myriad Collective last weekend. Yelris is a Queer Person of Colour - they are a genderfluid Electronic musician who performs instrumental and spoken word over music to explore their gender and cultural identity. Yelris is a child of asylum seekers stemming back from the Vietnam War, identifying as diasporic cantonese chinese. Hold the line is a song about resistance to oppressive institutions, they personally have experienced from Christian fundamentalist upbringing in an environment where speaking in tongues is the usual is the norm - it is also a piece about coming terms with their own voice and being able to speak up about the emotional and psychological warfare of having to justify their life and existence and human rights to folks who scaremonger and provoke 'heterenormative' sentiment to justify silencing those who are different.
Queering the Air collective