Vina Orden examines how narratives in popular media can perpetuate or challenge existing power structures and colonial mentalities.

Vina Orden will present on her essay in CUNY FORUM Volume 11:1, examining how narratives in popular media can perpetuate or challenge existing power structures and colonial mentalities. Orden explores this through the complex dynamics behind the pop culture success of comics like “The United States of Captain America.” Her analysis delves into the diverse creative team behind these comics, including queer, Filipino, First Nation, and South African writers. And she critically questions whether Captain America, despite such diverse creative input, must still operate within a context of “imperial power dynamics” and the realities of the U.S. nation state.

Vina Orden is a writer based in Lenapehoking/New York City whose work has appeared in Asian Journal, CUNY FORUM, The FilAm, The Halo-Halo Review, hella pinay, Hyperallergic, and The Margins. As senior poetry editor at Slant’d magazine, Vina supports and amplifies other emerging Asian American writers. She is a 2025 VONA Poetry Residency Fellow and has received fellowships from the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, Kweli, Roots. Wounds. Words., and Tin House. She also is working on her first novel for young adults.