Angel Trazo - Children’s book artist, illustrator, Artist, Graduate Student

Angel Trazo is a children’s book artist, illustrator, Artist, and Graduate Student based in Los Angeles. Growing up in the Bay Area, Angel was drawn to illustration and art, with dreams of becoming a book author and illustrator. Angel pursued Biology and Studio Art at Colgate University, where she also grew into her identity as an Asian American woman. The university’s lack of diversity brought Angel to seeking out and grow with a community of Asian and Asian American students, while continuing to draw. Angel’s senior Studio Art thesis Where Are You From?: Stories About Being Asian in America (2017) is a collection of hers and her Asian friends’ college experiences. Angel also published Notes & Doodles (2017), a series of sketches from her perspective of events she attended and conversations she noted. After college Angel began more work in the Asian American community, was an intern for the Youth Leadership Academy at DeAnza, current grad student at UCLA, self publishing her book We Are Inspiring (2019) and working on a boba book! Angel continues to work because she loves, “when people feel seen, represented, or validated by the work I create.”

@angeltrazo

The cover of Angel’s first book. Made when she was in second grade.

Were you always interested in art, drawing?
My mind always wanders and I’ve channeled my restless energy into drawing since I was a kid. When I was six, we did an assignment on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I wrote, “When I grow up, I want to be a book author and illustrator.” This dream stayed with me. However, growing up, I never asked for formal drawing lessons because I knew my parents couldn’t afford them. Instead, I would teach myself how to draw by reading  ‘How To Draw Manga’ books and scribbling my original characters in miscellaneous notebooks or on printer paper. I also loved taking art classes in public school because they were free. Then, in college, I received a large grant which nearly fully-funded my education and used the opportunity to pursue a major in Studio Art.

Why did you decide to pursue a Masters in Asian American Studies? And what brought you to connect art and Asian American Studies?
This is a long story. You might need to  grab a boba or other beverage. *Waits for you to find a comfortable place and relaxing beverage.* Okay, so, I went to college at Colgate University in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. I’m talking 6 hours away from New York City, 1.5 hours away from the nearest boba shop, and there were so few Asian-identifying people on campus that I got mistaken as an International student (I’m from California). I’m from the Bay Area, a part of the world lauded for its diversity,  so this was a total culture shock. Just imagine: Filipina American me with my California “Valley Girl” accent, some other Asian American friends, and my Russian Jewish friend from Boston, rolling up with our International student friend circle at the International Student Friendship dinner, sponsored by the local First Baptist Church aka a community of lovely, older white people who wanted to teach us about “American” customs. I just rolled with it and my best friends to this day are largely from this International student community. 

Anyway, I pursued a double-major in Biology and Studio Art. I started out Pre-Med with the goal of becoming a pediatrician, a track in-line with my relatives on both sides of the family (in the U.S. and the Philippines) who work as doctors, dentists, and pharmacists. I honestly enjoyed studying Biology, despite receiving mostly B’s throughout college (which felt disappointing as I’d gotten mostly A’s in high school). 

My sophomore year, I committed to adding my Studio Art major. Then, I stopped sleeping so I could dedicate my life to these very time-consuming majors and the rest of the time to socializing  (a path I do not recommend anyone follow). My junior year, I took my first Sociology class, a newly-implemented Pre-Med requirement. This was the first “critical” course I’d taken thus far, and I suddenly had the words to describe the discomfort I felt while on a predominantly-white campus. That same quarter, several Asian and Asian American women on campus formed a club called the “Organization of Asian Sisters in Solidarity” (OASIS), a group dedicated to uniting the small number of Asian femmes on campus and providing a space for discussions about identity, culture, microaggressions, and other issues. Such a group formed because Asian American Studies did not exist on our predominantly-white campus, a field I didn't realize existed until my senior year of college. All of this to say, despite starting out my junior year fatigued from my sleep-deprived lifestyle, joining OASIS woke me the f**k up. 

How does storytelling play into your art?
These conversations that facilitated connections in OASIS meetings led me to seek out critical conversations about intersectional identity with other Asian-identifying peers on campus. I’d also been keeping journals of my personal on-campus experiences with microaggressions, a term I had learned in 2014 due to Harvard’s viral “I Too Am Harvard” campaign and Colgate’s Sit-In protesting the lack of campus inclusion. 

Senior year of college meant I had to create a Studio Art thesis project to fulfill my major requirements. I decided to make a comic book about my college experience and made its content the outlet for the stories I heard over the years. I revisited Asian friends with whom I’d engaged in critical conversations before, asking if they’d be open to an interview about their college experience. These stories culminated into my first comic book titled Where Are You From?: Stories About Being Asian in America (2017).

When did you start visual note taking and event sketching?
At the same time I set out to make Where Are You From? (2017), I’d started working on Notes & Doodles (2017), a side project that ended up transforming into the complement or second-half of my Studio Art thesis. 

Notes & Doodles (2017) began with about ten sketches. I would live-sketch during events, starting with a Biology lecture that I attended. I hoped to subvert the seriousness of such academic talks by writing out the funniest thing the scientist said. I got hooked and started making a sketch at every event I went to, capturing conversations from various fields and perspectives, all the while showcasing my viewpoint as a Filipina American on a predominantly-white campus . This practice helped keep me focused and ‘in the moment’ during events, something increasingly difficult as I constantly worried over my studies senior year. (I was working on my first graphic novel, Notes & Doodles, and a Biology thesis that involved spending 10+ hours a week in the Cancer Bio Lab alone). By the end of the year, I’d amassed 280 drawings on 8.5’’x11’’ sheets of printer paper and the installation of the images together stood 12 feet high.

About a month before I graduated from college, I wrote a blog post about my art projects. I emphasized the need to share stories of students of color, particularly Asian American and International students on campus, a range of perspectives constantly stifled by the Western and Eurocentric curriculum and elitist campus culture. 

In May 2017, I received an email that would change my life forever. A fellow Asian American comic book artist, Katie Quan, reached out. She told me she was doing her Master’s in Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University. “Asian American Studies?” I exclaimed to myself. “That’s a thing?”

In the fall of 2017, though equipped with degrees in Biology and Art, I went to DeAnza Community College so I could take my first Asian American Studies courses. I also began applying to graduate schools for Asian American Studies. The following quarter, winter of 2018, I got into UCLA. 

That summer of 2018, I had the amazing opportunity to work as an Intern for the APALI Youth Leadership Academy at DeAnza. The course combined leadership development with Asian American Studies history, and I fell in love with teaching along the way. 

Then, in the two weeks between the internship and moving to LA for graduate school, I “hid” (meaning, spent all of my time) in Teaspoon or the library working on a children’s book project.

I often get told that I look like a “bubbly” or “happy” person. I find this funny because my art always stems from a place of anger. In 2018, having taken all of 3 Introductory Asian American Studies courses and co-leading the YLA course at De Anza, I desired to share what I learned about badass Asian American women. I’d been deeply inspired by Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison when browsing a local used book store, Recycled Bookstore. I wondered if any books like that existed about API women. At the time, summer of 2018, it did not. I. WAS. PISSED. How could my dream book not exist yet?!

In feminist children’s book anthologies already published, maybe one or two Asian women could be found (and usually were no longer living). Asian American women were even more rare. So, I furiously put We Are Inspiring  together, Googling, asking my colleagues for suggestions, and scouring articles. 

I received curious feedback along the way, with folks questioning a need for the book I was making. But when my book Kickstarter reached its $600 goal in less than 2 days, I realized I wasn’t the only one who dreamed of this book. 

When I came to UCLA, I finally self-published We Are Inspiring in the Winter of 2019. Since the Kickstarter, I’ve sold over 500 copies.

You've written about microagressions, answering the question, "where are you from?". How important is it that we as an Asian American community acknowledge these experiences? 
I titled my first book Where Are You From? because of how often someone asked me that question throughout my college experience. Oddly enough, through following the stories that stem from that question, I’d added to the field of Asian American literature without knowing Asian American Studies existed. This itself speaks volumes to the relevance of this question to our community, as well as other communities of color, who reside in this nation. In particular, my work exposes the white-centric logics of belonging and the underlying, racist assumptions that undermine students of color. 

For a long time, I felt that the slights I experienced, those “well-meaning” phrases which assumed my heritage as foreign or marveled at my ability to speak English (the only language I speak) only happened to me.  But putting together all of the stories in Where Are You From? and taking Asian American Studies courses said otherwise.

Then, in 2019, one of my best friends in college, Woohee Kim, and I published a paper to contextualize the comics depicting the microaggressions we faced within the field of Critical race theory and Asian American Studies. We hope by connecting our own experiences to our scholarship, and deconstructing them through a critical lens, we can help other Asian and Asian American students fight cultural hegemony and feel less alone.

How will you merge Asian Am Studies with visual arts to bring critical conversations among a variety or people?
Today, I continue my notes & doodles or “visual-notetaking” practice to archive and share the critical conversations I hear at conferences, lectures, or events among friends. After all, there may be a student like me who seeks out conversations, stories, or information about Asian American Studies without knowing such a field exists. I hope that this stranger stumbles upon my work somewhere on the Internet and gains access to the scholars and ideas that could potentially empower them. 

What are stories that you want to tell? Do you have any upcoming projects or work that you are excited about?
I’m always in-between mini-projects. I’m making a children’s book about boba, but all I can come up with is the cover art! Writer’s block is the worst. I’m thinking about making a children’s book about my parents and grandparents as kids in the Philippines. I’m also translating a short story I wrote when I was 15 - about Asian American girls trying to overcome their eating disorders - into a graphic novel. I just got an iPad and am having way too much fun experimenting with illustration using the Procreate app! 

How much do you love boba? And how do you relate it to your work?
I spent over a year writing a 90-page thesis on San José boba culture, run a boba review blog on Instagram (@bobastudies101), and dressed up as a Thai Tea boba last Halloween, so my love for boba borders on obsession. I grew up in the suburbs of San José, so I used my MA thesis to reflect the community I came from by highlighting the voices of Asian American youth. 

What do you love about art you do?
I love when people feel seen, represented, or validated by the work I create.  I love how my art helps me connect with others and connect others. And it’s so f**king fun to draw. It’s something I can do all day and not notice how much time has passed. Suddenly, the sun’s down, and I’m like oh **** - That’s what time it is? 

Photos courtesy of Angel Trazo
Profile photo by Sakshi Joglekar/Daily Bruin