
Awkwafina
Nora Lum[1] (born June 2, 1988),[2] known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress, rapper, and comedian. She rose to prominence in 2012 when her rap song "My Vag" became popular on YouTube. She then released her debut album, Yellow Ranger (2014), and appeared on the MTV comedy series Girl Code (2014–2015). She expanded to films with supporting roles in the comedies Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), Ocean's 8 (2018), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019). For her starring role as a grieving young woman in The Farewell (2019), she won a Golden Globe Award.
Awkwafina
- Actress
- rapper
- comedian
2005–present
Queens, New York, U.S.
Vocals
林家珍
Lín Jiāzhēn
Lín Jiāzhēn
Làhm Gāajān
Lam4 Gaa1zan1
Since 2020, Awkwafina has been a co-creator, writer, and executive producer of the Comedy Central series Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, where she also plays a fictionalized version of herself. In 2021, she portrayed Katy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.[3] She has also performed voice roles in the animated films Storks (2016), The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), The Bad Guys (2022), The Little Mermaid, Migration (both 2023), and Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024).
Early life[edit]
Awkwafina was born in Stony Brook, New York,[4] to Wally Lum, a Chinese American, and Tia Lum, a Korean American.[5] Her father worked in the information technology field,[4] and comes from a family of restaurateurs—her great-grandfather immigrated to the United States in the 1940s, and opened the Cantonese restaurant Lum's in Flushing, Queens,[6] one of the neighborhood's first Chinese restaurants.[7] Her mother was a painter who immigrated with her family to the United States from South Korea in 1972.[6] She died from pulmonary hypertension in 1992 when Awkwafina was four, and Awkwafina was subsequently raised by her father and paternal grandparents.[5] She became especially close to her paternal grandmother, Powah Lum.[5][7][8]
Awkwafina grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, and attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, where she played the trumpet and was trained in classical music and jazz.[9][10] At age 15, she adopted the stage name Awkwafina, "definitely a person I repressed" and an alter ego to her "quiet and more passive" personality during her college years.[11][12][13] She has cited Charles Bukowski, Anaïs Nin, Joan Didion, Tom Waits, and Chet Baker as early influences.[14] From 2006 to 2008, she learned Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University to communicate with her paternal grandmother.[2][15] She majored in journalism and women's studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York and graduated in 2011.[10]
Other ventures[edit]
Before launching her entertainment career, she worked as an intern at the Gotham Gazette in New York City; as an intern at the Times Union newspaper in Albany, New York; and as a publicity assistant for publishing house Rodale Books,[12] which fired her after they discovered her music videos. She later worked at a vegan bodega.[16] In 2015, she released a New York City guidebook, Awkwafina's NYC.[64] On May 16, 2019, she headlined The Infatuation's annual food festival, EEEEEATSCON where she spoke about her upbringing in Queens, and her family's Cantonese restaurant.[65]