Skyler Chin

Skyler Chin is a musician, martial artist, and writer born in San Francisco and raised in New York. A sixth-generation Chinese-American, he is a firm believer in the power of family storytelling to instill empathy and build connections. In 2019, in recognition of his work representing diverse stories and an authentic female kung fu narrative in Illegal, his first musical, Skyler received the Yale Tsai CITY Arts Innovation Award and the Harvard-National Arts Fellowship to study martial arts movie production in Southern China under Sin Kwok Lam, producer of Ip Man (2008).Outside of the arts, Skyler works on sustainability and climate change projects at JLL in New York.

ILLEGAL: The Chinese Immigrants of Angel Island

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Skyler Chin will present on Illegal, a poetry-rap-rock musical based on his grandfather’s immigration documents from when he was detained on Angel Island in 1923. The lyrics are inspired by poetry carved into the walls by Chinese Angel Island detainees. Chin wrote Illegal to give voice to Asian Americans like his grandfather whose stories had been left out of history, and to convey the fighting spirit of the people who began to define what it takes to become American.

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