Awkwafina

Her father worked in the information technology field, 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, 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.

Nora Lum (born June 2, 1988), known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress, rapper, and comedian.

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 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.

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.

From 2006 to 2008, she learned Mandarin at Beijing Language and Culture University to communicate with her paternal grandmother.

She majored in journalism and women's studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York and graduated in 2011.

Awkwafina began rapping at 13.

She got her start producing music with GarageBand but eventually learned Logic Pro and Ableton.

She rose to prominence in 2012 when her rap song "My Vag" became popular on YouTube.

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.

She then released her debut album, Yellow Ranger (2014), and appeared on the MTV comedy series Girl Code (2014–2015).

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.

She was part of the lineup at Tenacious D's Festival Supreme on October 25, 2014.

She was also a disc jockey (DJ) at bars in New York.

In 2015 she co-hosted its spin-off, Girl Code Live, on MTV.

Awkwafina hosted the short-form talk show web series Tawk for the digital production company Astronauts Wanted from 2015 to 2017.

The first season premiered on YouTube and was picked up for exclusive streaming on Verizon's Go90 platform.

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).

In 2016, she collaborated with comedian Margaret Cho on "Green Tea", a song that pokes fun at Asian stereotypes.

She is profiled in the 2016 documentary Bad Rap, an official selection at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

It puts the spotlight on her and Asian-American rappers such as Dumbfoundead, Rekstizzy and Lyricks.

It was an Official Honoree at the 2016 Webby Awards and was nominated for a 2016 Streamy Award in the News and Culture category.

In 2016 she played a supporting role as Christine, a member of Kappa Nu in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, and voiced Quail in the animated comedy film Storks.

She had a recurring role in the Hulu original series Future Man in 2017.

She released a 7-track EP, In Fina We Trust, on June 8, 2018; it won the 2019 A2IM Libera Award for Best Hip-Hop/Rap Album.

In 2018 she starred in the indie comedy Dude, playing Rebecca, one of four best friends.

She was among the principal cast in Ocean's 8, the all-female spinoff to the Ocean's Trilogy.

She then co-starred in the film Crazy Rich Asians, directed by Jon M. Chu, playing Goh Peik Lin, a Singaporean college friend of lead character Rachel Chu (Constance Wu).

For her starring role as a grieving young woman in The Farewell (2019), she won a Golden Globe Award.

She has also performed voice roles in the animated films The Angry Birds Movie 2 (2019), Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon (2021), DreamWorks Animation's The Bad Guys (2022), Disney's live action remake The Little Mermaid (2023), and Dreamworks Animation's Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024).

Awkwafina was born in Stony Brook, New York, to Wally Lum, a Chinese American, and Tia Lum, a Korean American.

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.