Lauren Lola on Writing, Identity & Her New Graphic Novel, Dasig

Mixed Asian Media - October 19, 2023

By Madeline Carpou

As a longtime professional writer, novelist, and contributor to MAM, Lauren Lola’s latest published work, Dasig, is yet another testament to her multifaceted talents as a storyteller. Her first published project in seven years, Dasig was also Lola’s first foray into writing for comics and graphic novels — an unexpected venture, to be sure, but not in the least bit an unfulfilling one.

Dasig was a collaboration between multiple people: artist Ponsi Alfonso, art director Joe Aquilizan, Filipino martial arts and weapons consultant Jacob Ira Vijandre, and producer Kristian Kabuay. Lola and Kabuay have been friends since 2017, so when he approached her with a treatment for a rough “edutainment” story about Filipino history, Lola happily signed on.

An independently published project, Dasig is a universal coming-of-age story that weaves together actual events from Philippine history alongside present-day issues. From the team's official description:

Dasig is a young warrior-in-training struggling to focus on her pursuits. Her Datu (chief) is very aware of this and has her asking herself a very important question to consider: Why does she want to be a warrior? As she seeks an answer, danger enters the horizon when invaders from an unknown land threaten to take over. As her Datu gets ready for battle, Dasig wonders if her focus is in the right place to where she'll be able to fight off the pending threat.

The project took many forms, with Kabuay initially imagining Dasig’s earliest iterations as an animated short film. Eventually, the treatment morphed into a script for a graphic novel, with Kabuay giving Lola a rough idea of what he wanted in the story. Lola took that treatment and created Dasig from it — somewhat literally, in fact. Originally, Dasig was going to be a male warrior, but Lola insisted on making her female. Through Lola, Dasig went from a concept into a woman molded from her own sense of drive and ambition (and who was likely inspired in great part by Lola’s own great-aunt, who fought in the Filipino resistance against Japanese occupation during WWII).

The team now lovingly refers to Dasig as their “violent Disney princess,” which puts her in step with the vast modern catalog of empowering female protagonists. These are the sorts of women Lola wants to continue writing about, especially during her current enrollment at the UCLA Professional Program in Screenwriting. By the end of the program, Lola is expected to finish two full-length screenplays, both of which she plans on centering around mixed-race Filipino women like herself. She wants these women to be “very assertive, which [she thinks] we should see more and be okay with. Women who are not afraid to speak their mind, women who know what they want, and women who are not afraid to admit they don’t know something and are not afraid of letting ego get in the way of their learning.” 

Growing up, Lola considered herself something of a “junky” when it came to movies and TV shows, but she never saw herself in any of the women portrayed on-screen. Though she is grateful to have grown up in a place as diverse as the Bay Area, she spent much of her upbringing trying to consolidate her mixed and Filipino identities with a world that wasn’t sure what to make of her (the “What are you?” question was not unfamiliar to her). Therefore, through her writing, she hopes to eke out a space both for herself and for others like her. “As nuanced and as complicated as it can be sometimes,” she said, “when you’re living in a world where people like to box themselves and others into a certain margin, I like that I kinda get to defy the odds of that.”

These are goals Lola has been working on for most of her life, if not all of it. “I’ve loved the art of storytelling ever since I was little,” she said. “I’ve been writing my whole life, but it wasn’t until about 11 years ago that I started taking it more seriously, and that meant going back to different avenues and exploring [them].” Since then, she’s published two novels (An Absolute Mind and A Moment’s Worth, two sci-fi stories with AAPI protagonists), various short stories, and now, a graphic novel. Lola wants to continue developing her craft and expanding her comprehension of writing as much as she can. The result is a career that’s already proved to be industrious and prolific, and will only continue to be so. “Just having [this comprehensive] perspective and having it evolve over time,” she said, “especially as I’ve gotten to connect more with my Filipino identity and better understand my mixed identity, has helped a lot, especially as a writer and as a human being.”

Aside from Dasig and her upcoming screenplays, Lola is also proud to announce her role in the comic anthology Giant-Size Lumpia, created by Patricio Ginelsa. Lola has been friends with Ginelsa for quite a while, having served as a consultant on his other series Jemini, but was recently asked to write a story of her own in Lumpia. Titled “My Sassy Samosa,” she’s excited for this newest edition of Lumpia to make the rounds at upcoming conventions.

Meanwhile, she’ll continue to ride the Dasig wave with her team. The graphic novel will debut at a block party hosted by San Francisco’s SOMA Pilipinas, and from there will travel to various conventions. The publication of this graphic novel is nothing short of a triumph, both for the entire team and for Lola as a writer, and we’re excited to see what she does next!

Dasig will officially release this coming October 21, 2023. Be sure to follow the team’s IG @dasig1521 for more information on tour and convention dates! You can also follow Lauren Lola here at MAM, on Twitter and IG @akolaurenlola, and via her website.

Madeline (she/her) is a half-Chinese, half-Greek, fully mixed writer from up and down the West Coast. A graduate of UC Santa Cruz, she studied History with a focus on East Asia, both to understand her own heritage better and to better understand racial histories as a whole. Her creative background is extensive, from producing folk songs to writing essays about video games. Through her work, she hopes to provide a sense of understanding and belonging to others, while also ironing out some catharsis of her own.