Not Your Token Minority

In this episode, I chat with Dil Khosa, co-founder of creative entrepreneurship hub Manzana, based here in Auckland, New Zealand. She speaks with me about:

• Her experience moving to New Zealand from Ma…

Shaneel Lal (they/them) is a prominent activist and political commentator who sits at the intersection of Aotearoa New Zealand’s BIPOC and queer communities. They are a fierce advocate for ending con…

Auckland-based artist and photographer Abhi Chinniah joins me in this episode to talk how colourism has fundamentally shaped her life so far and her most recent exhibition “Melanin Rising”. 

She share…

Vivian Chandra is a tech consultant with a huge difference. Her passion for education and democratising digital technology means she spends much of her time upskilling teachers in Aotearoa New Zealan…

University of Auckland PhD candidate Lovely Dizon speaks with me in this episode about the under-served mental health needs of 1.5 generation Asian young people in Aotearoa New Zealand. Our conversat…

Auckland-based playwright and director Talia Pua talks to me in this episode about her latest bodies of work - a play titled Pork and Poll Taxes which premiered in 2021 and an exhibition about Chines…

Vikram Udyawer has loved space ever since he was a kid growing up in four different countries. Like many other kids who grow up in different cultures, Vikram struggled with belonging and identity, bu…

Emi Chiba spent her most formative years between the UK, Japan and Spain, before eventually settling in Tokyo, Japan where she lives now. And the road between her being born in the UK to a British fa…

이혜지 Hye Ji (Erica) Lee joins me on this episode to talk activism and decoloniality - specifically what constitutes activism for her and how she finds the joy in activism, rather than focusing only on…

In the last year of her degree in communication design at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, Sochetha Meng created three zines documenting her family’s past, her own present and her hope…

Florence and Athina are the co-founders of Covry, a company that makes inclusive eyewear for faces of all shapes and sizes. I bought a pair of these glasses last year after seeing an ad on Instagram …

Dhayana, who goes by “MissDeusGeek” online, is an avid gamer, influencer and content creator based in Australia. Of Sri Lankan descent and born and raised in Malaysia, Dhayana is passionate about cha…

Golriz Ghahraman is often described as New Zealand’s first refugee Member of Parliament (MP) and it is a label that follows her in all her work with under-represented communities in New Zealand. She …

This is a rerun of the first episode of the first season of NYTM that aired in February 2021. 

In the very first episode of Not Your Token Minority, I speak with my good friend Sheila about growing up…

The "better life" adoption narrative is one that many of us know well - a child, who is usually from the global south, is adopted by a loving couple from the west and given a “better life”, one that …

"Nikkei" is a term that you'll hear a few times in this episode. It's a Japanese word that means "of Japanese descent" and is used to refer to the huge communities of Japanese diaspora living oversea…