South Asians for Black Lives is a program of Malikah started by a collective of South Asian women in California. The program is aimed at calling in our South Asian community to dismantle anti-Blackness, build antiracist coalitions and to inspire folks to join the abolitionist movement. We are learning as a collective to do this through a transformative justice and healing approach. Moreover, we ground ourselves in a BIPOC feminist ethics.

Aybala Turkarslan is a high school junior from Seattle, Washington. She recently founded publishYOUth—an international online service connecting youth writers to publication and competition opportunities—after noticing the difficulty for youth writers in finding publishing opportunities in an applicable, affordable, and organized manner. As a young writer herself, Aybala enjoys poetry, fiction, and essay writing. Her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, the Ringling College of Art & Design, and the INS Essay Contest Top 15 for her essay on neuromarketing in politics. Outside of writing she is passionate about social change and entrepreneurship, as well as sunshine and Turkish dramedies.

We are Jing & Monica. We live in Northern California. We have a 7 year old & 2 year old twins. We also have 2 dogs & 3 cats. We worked hard to create this fun & crazy family. It’s worth every emotion & struggle we have been through for almost a decade.

Wang’s advice for Asian girls who want to pursue their passions—their dreams over financial stability—is to not feel forced about loving something. “My parents told me what I liked—they told me I liked viola. They told me I like tennis. It took me a long time in college to figure out what I actually liked, which wasn’t viola—although tennis is really cool. Figuring out what you actually love in our passion makes you feel great excitement—like 10 out of 10 level. It’s what you would want to spend a lot of time doing.”

Jade Ma is an English actress based in Vancouver. She was born in Hong Kong to a British father and Chinese mother. She made her professional TV acting debut in the 2018 Christmas comedy film Surviving Christmas with the Relatives as Soon while also rehearsing for the UK/International Tour of Miss Saigon. In 2019, she was cast in the upcoming film Black Widow. She also stars as Sky Tyler in the Netflix series Zero Chill.