Browning Asian Canada

o Kuwentong Pauwi is an ongoing story-sharing walking tour inspired by interviews, informal conversations, and ongoing dialogues between the Kuwentong Pamamahay project team and Filipinx Canadian community members in the Lower Mainland. This interactive tour explores different site of significance in the Joyce-Collingwood neighbourhood—known to many as the “heart” of Vancouver’s Filipinx Canadian community. Through personal memories and community storytelling, participants are invited to listen, reflect, and join in kuwentuhan: nourishing conversations on identity, home, and belonging.

For more information, please visit the project website.

Hosted by Chef Kris Young from @kada.yvr, Alyssa Sy de Jesus, and Dr.JP Catungal, this workshop was initially organized to explore how colonial histories and transnational migration shape Filipino/x foodways and offered a space to reflect on the layers of home that we carry with us. In the shadow of ongoing grief and accompanying community response, this event also invited participants to gather and share connection, care, and kuwentuhan. Sharing food with each other is the human throughline of our communal gatherings, marking and helping us process events.

In many ways, it’s those particular colonial histories and transnational migration patterns that shape the ways that we hold grief, and it is in the work of sifting through those layers that we navigate the pathways forward. This event aimed to honour those affected by returning to what sustains us: community care, collective storytelling, and the simple act of feeding one another. In doing so, we hope to reclaim the narrative of ‘food as cultural heritage,’ not simply as a site of cultural consumption, but as a means to nourish ourselves and each other through the often-unseen labours of the communal kitchen.

For more information, visit this page.

This film screening of Inay and panel discussion explored the immigration pathways between the Philppines and Canada to examine family dynamics within the Filipino/x community. Inay, which means “mama” in Tagalog, is an intimate and personal look at the experiences and trauma endured by many Filipino Canadians. Through intimate conversations, this self-reflexive documentary aims to bridge the silences and disconnect between the first and second generations of the Filipino community.

The Inay screening was followed by a discussion featuring Director Thea Loo in conversation with esteemed community organizers and panelists Erie Maestro (Migrante Canada and NPC3), Kiana Tom (Migrante BC and International Migrants Alliance), and Darla Tomeldan (Pinoy Pride Vancouver). The discussion was moderated by Dr. JP Catungal (UBC ACRE).

For more details, visit this page.

In our second inaugural Browning Asian Canada Drag Lecture, Dr. Vagistan, your favorite South Asian drag auntie, brought the nightclub to the classroom (and vice versa) to explain how critical social theory matters in queer nightlife. Touching on themes that include globalization, feminist theory, and islamophobia, she staged the nightclub as a site of politics and pleasure.

Part lecture, part lipsync, part audience participation, the show demonstrated how much drag teaches us, even requires us, to be in relation with the rest of the world. Dr. Vagistan’s lecture-performance was preceded by opening performances by fabulous local drag artists Bongganisa and Jolene Queen Sloan. Lessons in Drag is a feature event of “Browning Asian Canada”, a public research and engagement series convened by Dr. JP Catungal, Co-Director of UBC ACRE. This feature event was co-organized by UBC ACRE and Chris Chong Chan Fui (Assistant Professor, Film, SFU School for the Contemporary Arts) and was made possible with the generous support from UBC Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice; Public Humanities Hub; Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies; Theatre and Film; Faculty of Education.

For additional information, see this page.