During the month of May, the United States celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The team at Kwento Comics has been a driving force behind positive awareness and community engagement, to help bring Asian American and Pacific Islander creators into the spotlight.
We asked Waverley Lim, COO and Co-Founder of Kwento Comics, to share her experience from a very busy month, so we can learn more about the people behind the stories we all have come to enjoy. She was excited to participate, so I now turn it over to Waverley for the remainder of the article.
By Waverley Lim, Kwento Comics
Kwento Comics kicked off AAPI Heritage Month early at UCLA for SIPA’s (Search to Involve Pilipino Americans) AAPI Solidarity Conference: A Youth Empowerment Event on April 29th . It was so wonderful to see a room full of AAPI high school and college students who were empowered to take action and be proactive members in the community so that we can collectively build a better future. It was a day filled with education, advocacy, wellness, resilience, and celebration of one another’s culture.
As the students came by our table to learn more about our company, we were able to share with the students on why we created Kwento Comics, which was to combat the lack of AAPI characters represented in media. During the event we also posed this question to the students: “Why do you support AAPI creators?” The students were then able to write their answers on our superhero cape. Some of their answers included: “Because I want to see more of them in the world,” “Because representation matters and AAPI creators should know that really anything is possible,” “If we want to authentically be represented, we need more AAPI creators out there being supported.”
On May 6th, we teamed up with our friends from the comic book and movie series, Lumpia with a Vengeance, and headed over to Hi-Fi Kitchen, a Filipino restaurant in the heart of Historic Filipinotown, to celebrate Free Comic Book Day. As people stopped in to order some tasty Filipino food, they were able to come to our table where we gave away an exclusive promo code to a free digital download to Issue #1 of our series, The Mask of Haliya, for readers on GlobalComix!
It was so fun to gather in celebration of Filipino Komiks and showcase all the wonderful AAPI talent that we have! Hi-Fi Kitchen even had a yummy dessert named after our series called the Haliya Float, which was a delicious mango graham pie with ube halaya jam. YUM! The most moving moment of the event for me was seeing the kids soaking in the SoCal sun, eating delicious food from our culture, and enjoying a great read from our books.
Our last event took place in NorCal at San Jose City College for their Asian Pacific American Heritage Month celebrations on May 15th. Creator and CEO of Kwento Comics, Cecilia Lim and I, presented on the importance of AAPI identities in comics. The seminar allowed us to speak with the students and faculty on the history of AAPI representation in media and in comics as well as reflect on the current state of representation in the industry.
We hope that our talk encouraged other creatives to feel confident in creating their own work that is so necessary and needed our community as well as collaborate with other AAPI creatives who can help authentically share our stories.
Thank you so much to Waverley Lim and the entire Kwento Comics team. Their passion for building an inclusive community and supporting creators shines through in everything they do.
Use the links below to find out more about Kwento Comics, follow them here on GlobalComix, and support them by reading The Mask of Haliya.
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Did you have a chance to participate in Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month activities? Let us know in the comments!