10-year anniversary of the ‘Funny Asian Women Kollective’ [Video]

ST PAUL, Minnesota — Later this week, the Funny Asian Women Kollective (FAWK) will be taking the stage at The Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul to celebrate their 10-year anniversary. 

Naomi Ko, May Lee-Yang, and Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay — three English majors, Bush Leadership Fellows, and McKnight Fellows — started the group as a way to combat the invisibility and dehumanization of Asian American women. 

“It sounds really serious. All to say, we host live comedy shows; we do professional development workshops and we just do a bunch of random, funny stuff to create spaces for Asian women to tell their stories, uncensored,” Lee-Yang said. 

The trio came together one night in 2014. 

“It birthed out of Naomi’s trauma,” said Vongsay, causing all three to laugh. “Naomi did a show. She didn’t do very well because she was censored and she didn’t feel comfortable with censoring herself like mid-reading of a poem. That …