Pearl is an artist, illustrator, animator and author from Vancouver, Canada. Much of her work centres around her mix as the daughter of a Chinese immigrant mother and a Jamaican immigrant father. In our conversation we talk about how growing up steeped in Vancouver’s rich Cantonese culture gave Pearl a strong sense of what it meant to be Chinese. However, her mixed heritage complicated her place in the community. Doubts about her ability to ever be Chinese enough were compounded by expectations from her peers to meet black stereotypes. Negotiating these two distinct cultures created what she describes as ‘tension’, which is fittingly the title of her debut graphic novel. She gives us food for thought on what it means to be Black, Chinese and uncompromisingly whole