Lani Cupchoy, Ph.D.
“I seek to ignite a new wave of creative spirit and inspire humanity to carry oneself the same way we try to navigate life – with passion, light, and joy!”
About
Welcome! As a possibilitarian and multi-ethnic native of Los Angeles, CA, I am proud to share my creative works as a public intellectual-creative seeking to interconnect different worlds rooted in a self-reflexive patchwork of cultural consciousness which has manifested in academia-teaching, film, visual art, music, photography, and modeling. An important part of my journey was …
Academic Portfolio
“My journey as a public intellectual-creative has guided me toward a few core beliefs that inform everything I do, create, and teach.”
Award-Winning Filmmaker
“Film has a timeless power — perhaps beyond that of any other medium I have ever utilized — to provide a platform for voices and stories that need to be told from our communities.”
“Listening to the whispers of my heart, I picked up my childhood pastels and paintbrushes to cope with the stress of grad school and this important step led me to an enriching journey as a creative spirit.”
Visual Artist
Recording Artist
“Music is strongly tied to energies and emotions. If I can’t communicate verbally with you … my music will.”
Photographer
“I believe that the eyes are the windows to the soul and my role is to photograph that essence.”
“I have discovered that an image is often a reflection of a team of creatives – photographers, make-up artists, hair artists, accessory-wardrobe artists – performed by the model.”
Model
Book
Order Print Copy:
Curandereando: Sacred Decolonial Healing
Lani Cupchoy
University Arizona Press, September 2026.
Curandereando: Sacred Decolonial Healing reclaims curanderismo as a living and revolutionary practice of ancestral wisdom, resilience, and renewal. Blending poetry, Spanglish storytelling, oral histories, and testimonios, this hybrid work illuminates healing as both a sacred tradition and a decolonial act of resistance. The book traces curanderismo’s survival under colonial oppression, its adaptations across diasporas, and its vital role in addressing contemporary struggles for ecological balance, cultural survival, and social justice. By centering diverse healers and community voices, it resists folkloric portrayals and instead presents curanderismo as an evolving practice deeply relevant to today’s crises.
“Curandereando: Sacred Decolonial Healing is a multilingual poetic invocation that honors the legacy of curanderas/os/es through historical research, oral history, and ethnography. Following the traditions of feminist of color activist-scholarship, Lani Cupchoy offers a beautifully written, creative, analytical work that unearths sacred memories and invites readers into a consciousness that seeks healing, interconnectedness, and wholeness. This book offers a vital remedio for (re)connection.”
Book
Order Print Copy:
Echoes of Memory: War, Testimony and Survival on Sanzao Island
Lani Cupchoy and Robert Cupchoy
Barnes & Noble Press, March 2026.
Recipient of the Literary Gold Titan Book Award 2026
Echoes of Memory reconstructs the experiences of civilians on Sanzao Island during the Japanese occupation of China (1937–1945). Drawing on oral histories, family archives, poetry, and historical research, the book documents survivor testimony and community memory to illuminate everyday life, survival, and the transmission of memory across generations.
“Two generations of effort resulted in this very first reconstruction, in the English language, of war crimes committed by the Japanese army in Sanzao. The oral histories and photographs are precious, and the analyses of memory and trauma are truly powerful.”
In the Media
