Awkwafina

***Nora Lum*** (June 2, 1988, Stony Brook, New York, USA), 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), Awkwafina won a Golden Globe Award.

Since 2020, Awkwafina has served as co-creator, writer, and executive producer of the Comedy Central series Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens, in which 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. She has also performed voice roles in the animated films The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), The Bad Guys (2022), and in the musical The Little Mermaid (2023).

Awkwafina was born in Stony Brook, New York, to Wally Lum, a Chinese American, and Tia Lum, a Korean American. Her father worked in the information technology field, and comes from a family of restaurateurs—his father immigrated to the United States in the 1940s, and opened the Cantonese restaurant Lum's in Flushing, Queens, one of the neighborhood's first Chinese restaurants. Her mother was a painter who immigrated with her family to the United States from South Korea in 1972. She died from pulmonary hypertension in 1992 when Awkwafina was four, and Awkwafina was subsequently raised by her father and paternal grandparents. She became especially close to her paternal grandmother, Powah Lum.

Awkwafina began rapping at 13. She got her start producing music with GarageBand but eventually learned Logic Pro and Ableton. In 2012, her song "My Vag" became popular on YouTube. She originally wrote the song in college as a response to Mickey Avalon's "My Dick (Tribute to Nate)". She was fired from her job at a publishing house when her employer recognized her in the video. Her solo hip-hop album Yellow Ranger was released on February 11, 2014. Its 11 tracks include a number of her previous singles released on YouTube, including the title track "Yellow Ranger", "Queef" and "NYC Bitche$". In 2014, Awkwafina appeared in six episodes of the third and fourth seasons of Girl Code. In 2015 she co-hosted its spin-off, Girl Code Live, on MTV.

In 2019, Awkwafina starred in the film The Farewell, directed by Lulu Wang. She played Billi, a writer who visits her ill grandmother in China. The film received critical acclaim. Awkwafina received the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, becoming the first person of Asian descent to win a Golden Globe Award in any lead actress film category, after being only the sixth woman of Asian descent to be nominated in the lead actress in a musical or comedy category. In the same year, she starred as avatar Ming Fleetfoot in the film Jumanji: The Next Level, which was a commercial success. In July 2019, Awkwafina was cast as Katy in Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings alongside actors Simu Liu and Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film was released in theaters on September 3, 2021, earning critical praise and grossing $430.5 million. She won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Shang-Chi. In August 2019, Disney announced that Awkwafina would voice Sisu the dragon in the animated film Raya and the Last Dragon, which was released on March 5, 2021. Awkwafina improvised much of her dialogue for the film, drawing comparisons to Robin Williams' performance as the Genie in Aladdin.