Kristina Wong

Kristina Wong is an American comedian and performer, born June 4, 1978, in San Francisco to an accountant mother and an insurance salesman father. A third-generation Chinese American, she attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 2000 with degrees in English and World Arts and Cultures and a minor in Asian American Studies; her senior project, Big Bad Chinese Mama, was a satirical fake mail-order-bride website. Wong works primarily in solo theater and performance art, using satire to explore race, sex, privilege and the Asian American experience. Her show Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest examined depression and suicide among Asian American women. During the COVID-19 pandemic she organized hundreds of volunteers into the "Auntie Sewing Squad" to sew masks, an experience she turned into the solo play Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord (2021). The play was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making Wong the first Asian American woman named a Pulitzer finalist in that category, and won the Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for outstanding solo show. She is also a Guggenheim Fellow and Doris Duke Artist Award recipient.