Kat Evasco
Themes — Activism, Familial Relationships, Immigration
Kat Evasco is a queer, undocumented Pilipina artist-activist, active in her work toward immigration reform. In 1989, upon discovering her husband’s affair, Kat’s mother moved her and her sister to Los Angeles to live with her grandmother. Living in the US, her family provided her with a fake Social Security card and birth certificate, allowing her to attend and graduate from San Francisco State University with a BA in Asian American Studies. Kat was inspired by Jose Antonio Vargas’ “Coming Out” as undocumented in 2012. She has integrated her education, artistry and life experiences to bring attention to issues of Immigration Reform, most notably through her contribution to the “Take the Risk” project, and her one-woman show “Mommy Queerest.” She states that although her mother received her green card “three years ago […] my sister and I don’t have ours yet,” noting that she and many other undocumented citizens of the US do important work in public service and deserve the same rights as a functioning citizen of the country.
Kat currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and utilizes her voice and creative agency to spark change in the conversation and bring light to the stake of Asian Americans within the Immigrant Rights movement.
- Narrator: Kat Evasco
- Date recorded: April 4th, 2015
- Duration: 40m
I was like, Mom, coming out is a bigger thing than us. This is a bigger thing, this is a historical movement and it’s a historic social movement and now is the time.
So, there’s a lot to risk. There’s a lot at risk, and so that’s why we decided to name the project, “Take The Risk.” ‘Cus I think that even there’s a lot to risk, the offset, the impact it can make if more and more people come out as undocumented, the bigger an impact it can make around Immigration Reform. Kind of similar to the LGBT movement…