A talk with Susan Lieu, a Harvard College alum, about the national premiere of her one-person production, 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother. The performance explores how beauty and gender standards affected her mother, and the way that that trauma and intergenerational trauma have affected her. She spoke about the form and content of her production, and her personal journey to becoming a performance artist. She also talked about the ways in which her racial and gender identities affected her time in business spaces. She also talked about the transition into art making and performance as a way of healing. Ultimately, she wanted this to be a more intimate conversation of healing, art, and identity. She also did a screening of part of her live performance, and will talk about the ethics of storytelling and memory.

About Susan Lieu:
Susan Lieu is a Vietnamese-American activist playwright and performer who tells stories that refuse to be forgotten. With a vision for individual and community healing—made possible through the interplay of comedy and drama—her work delves deeply into the lived realities of body insecurity, grieving, and trauma. Her first theatrical solo show, “140 LBS: HOW BEAUTY KILLED MY MOTHER” it is the unfortunate true story of how Susan’s mother died from plastic surgery malpractice when Susan was 11 years old and her search to find the man responsible for her mother’s death.