My work has really been defined by the fact that I am an immigrant. I came to America when I was 20 with a fully formed ethnic and cultural identity. I did not come as a child, where I could assimilate easily. I think the feeling of being an outsider, of not having the same kind of support systems as someone who has been born and grown up here, has really colored the activism that White Snake Projects does.

As an outsider, I know what it’s like not to belong, and that’s why we continue to try to make space for people who are not included in mainstream America. That includes Asian Americans, and other people of color. I grew up in Singapore. It was what they call a benign totalitarian state. The sense of free thinking and free speech was suppressed. It was only by coming to America that I began to learn for the first time in law school about the American Constitution and First Amendment rights. I think that these American values, which I’ve slowly started to internalize, have driven me to create a company that is committed to uplifting many marginalized voices who would otherwise not be heard.

For a lot of successful Asian American opera creators, there is always the danger of being pigeonholed as only being able to write Asian-inflected pieces. That’s not true. Of course it isn’t, because ultimately, we are part of American culture. There is also this perpetuation of negative stereotypes through the traditional rep. There’s a lot of discussion about the negative stereotyping in Madame Butterfly and Turandot. That’s the reason why White Snake Projects exists, because we want to show a different side—not just for Asian Americans, but for women, for any person of color.

Cerise Lim Jacobs is the Founder and Executive Producer of White Snake Projects, which describes itself as "an activist opera company making mission-driven work that unites artmaking with civic practice." After a long career as a lawyer and with no background in opera, Jacobs wrote her first libretto—Madam White Snake—as a birthday gift to her husband Charles. Jacobs went on to expand that first opera into a trilogy, founding frequent NEA grantee White Snake Projects along the way.

This excerpt is from an interview with Cerise Lim Jacobs that first appeared in the American Artscape issue, Showing Strength Through Creativity: Equity and Access in the Arts for Asian American/Pacific Islander Communities.