The Parasol Maker – Mia Tong
Mia Tong’s project for the 2025 Jack Straw Writers Program is a mythology-inspired Young Adult adventure duology. The story revolves around a young adult named Vana, her caretaker who contracts an illness, and Vana’s journey to find a cure in a vast country she knows little about. In her conversation with curator Kathleen Alcalá, they discuss what got her interested in mythology, the Monkey King myth, and why it’s important to tell stories with strong female protagonists. “It’s sort of about how this heroine can assume different types of roles. Or even subverting what we think about when we think about what women do and kind of reimagining what being a hero or being a heroine really is.”
Music by Greg Kramer, produced in part through the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.
