This year, them. is honoring Mimi Zhu as part of our annual Now List, our awards for LGBTQ+ visionaries. Read more about our honorees here.
Mimi Zhu and I met the same way that most of us queer Asian creatives do: social media. It was March 2018; I had posted a rambling, typed-out reflection onto my Instagram stories about how I was feeling blocked as a writer struggling with navigating institutions, and they replied saying that they loved it. In my moment of vulnerability, I wasn’t necessarily seeking any sort of pity or affirmation, but Mimi’s response was exactly what I needed at the time: another writer, who was facing similar challenges as I was, telling me that my outpouring of emotions actually mattered.
Since then, I’ve had the honor of being able to see Mimi’s star rise firsthand, as someone in their orbit of friends. Their ascent as a queer Chinese Australian writer, multidisciplinary artist, and organizer, who just received their first major book deal without any institutional support, is nothing short of astronomical. I still remember reading their first 2017 essay for Vice, about the times they’ve heard the word “chink” in their life (including an instance it was uttered by an abusive ex-lover). I was in awe that they could even unpack their violent trauma to eventually stand in their strength, saying that they refuse to “carry the weight” of the word.
Even back then, the intention of their work was clear: Writing is one of the most potent tools for transformation and healing that you can harness. Once you get the words out on the page (or in the notes app), you can clearly see yourself. Once you share them with others, they can see where they are in relation to your truth. Then the cycle of reflection begins once more. Through their unabashedness in sharing their reflections, their commitment to community, and savvy approach to social media (while still acknowledging its limitations), Mimi has forged their own path to “success” without compromising their sense of self that is always in a state of growth and change. “These institutions never supported me in the first place,” Mimi tells me when we catch up in May. “They never even wanted to investigate or understand who I was. It took very grassroots and DIY sharing to be able to have my writing read at all.”
Over the years, I’ve seen Mimi pursue all facets of their artistry, with the generosity of their expression never falling short. After we met, they’ve made an entire EP and musical film with a group of friends under the name ZoomBug, hosted writing workshops for people to hold each other in their struggles, and launched their ongoing newsletter “Write to Heal” — a continual mantra for their work and a constant effort to help others harness the power of the pen for themselves.
I’ve also witnessed Mimi hone the format of their aesthetically pleasing yet tonally urgent Instagram dispatches on topics like grief, anxiety, and imposter syndrome, with which they’ve amassed over 85,000 followers. One of those, about collectivism, was reposted by Britney Spears in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, sparking many internet memes about “comrade Britney.” (I interviewed them about that moment.) I’ve seen their hair dyed in all the shades of the rainbow, with each color symbolizing “a different period of my life,” they once wrote. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve seen them emerge as a voice for their communities, never hesitating to speak about the rights and humanity of QTPOC folks, undocumented people, and Asians of the diaspora.
A natural extension of the ideas they’ve been parsing through for years, Mimi’s book, Be Not Afraid of Love (arriving in 2022), is an exploration of how our romantic relationships “echo out into the world,” they tell me. By using their past experience with intimate partner violence as a “framework,” Mimi intends to tease out how these relationships are inherently connected to the ones we have with our families, ourselves, our communities, and the state. Instead of producing a work that centers the abuser or the pain at the time of the trauma, they hope to examine the “psychological aftermath” in the victim and how that ripples out intergenerationally. They describe the writing process as a “roller coaster.” But after all these years, Mimi knows that it wouldn’t be all worth it, if not for the journey.
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