Juanita Navas-Nguyen’s meditation on identity, belonging, and who gets to decide who you are and where you’re from comes with plenty of food for thought, as well as plenty of actual food to share. A disarmingly energetic performer, she greets her audience at the door with a sweet treat and sits with us to listen (really listen) to the Acknowledgement Of Country: a nice touch which of course neatly underlines the topic under discussion.

Through sharing stories from her life, and inviting us to share our own, Navas-Nguyen dissects her experiences of racism, tokenism and playing up to cultural stereotypes (is she really a boba liberal?). Navas-Nguyen is Australian with Asian/Latina heritage, and it’s fascinating to hear how much her appearance makes others push her towards one ‘side’ of that heritage over the other, particularly as a child. The world isn’t always kind to people who don’t fit into boxes and now she’s trying to reflect, educate and inform through the best medium possible: food. She’s right too; good things happen when people gather over a meal, and if her guacamole can’t change things for the better than nothing can.  

Confessions Of A Boba Liberalist, The Courtyard Of Curiosities At The Migration Museum, run ended.