Today Colin is joined by his dear sister, comrade, and beloved friend, Pamela Chavez. The two met a little more than 2 decades ago at UC Santa Cruz via mutual friends, and came together due to their love for art, music, activism, liberatory education, and being hella f------- silly together as they made the path by walking it. She is someone C has and continues to admire and learn profoundly from, via her contagious courage as a Woman of Color Artist, Youth Advocate, Cultural worker, and community member. Today's guest is someone who is otherworldly talented as it pertains to being her boldest, baddest, biggest, most brilliant self, in the face of all the dehumanizing and oppressive f---ery our society and world has to offer. Today they discuss Marjane Satrapi's groundbreaking Graphic Memoir, Persepolis...
Pamela Chavez is a Costa Rican-American animation writer, director and visual storyteller shaping bold narratives at the intersection of culture, justice, and imagination. Her work translates complex ideas into emotionally resonant animated experiences that center underrepresented voices and ignite public dialogue.
Pamela’s films have screened at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, OUTFEST, and the 92nd Street Y in New York, and are featured on platforms such as PBS Online, HBO Latino, and YouTube. As a director and collaborator, she has created original work for institutions including the LA Philharmonic, Amazon, and the American Medical Association, blending visual storytelling with social impact and clarity of vision.
A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Pamela is grounded in traditional animation, oil painting, and stop-motion techniques while pushing the boundaries of narrative form to influence how stories are seen, heard, and understood.
The Paper Plane is a podcast created and hosted by Colin Masashi Ehara, where he interviews people he is blessed and honored to share community with, and asks them about a book(s) that have had a transformational impact on their lives. In a society where literacy rates are steadily declining and a growing number of podcasts hosted by cishet men, un/consciously champion expressions of masculinity that come at the expense of women, femmes, and LGBTQIA2S+ (especially BIPOC) folx, this space aims to operate as a counter-narrative.
The Paper Plane is a space that intends to highlight the dire importance of relationships, community, dialogue, perpetual learning, honest expression as art, art as honest expression, and freedom for literacy and literacy for freedom. It speaks to planes of existence attached to the act of reading, but also as a metaphor for the “flights” we take as we sit in what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls “a one way interface” as readers, and how these “journeys” shape us...
