San Francisco-based magician Jade spoke with Genii editor at large Chloe Olewitz about resisting control and finding her voice as an artist over the course of her decades-long career in magic. She also discussed creating the Chinese-themed act that honored her heritage and eventually took her around the world.
I don’t like being told what to do. When I was starting off in the magic world, people kept telling me, “You can’t do this, you can’t do that.” They were trying to put a perimeter around what I could do, but I learned to ignore them. Now that’s become a part of my thinking: Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.
I’m not just being defiant. To survive in the magic world as a woman in the 1980s, that’s what I had to deal with. There was a lot of “no” around me.
Anytime they said “no” I would think, “Why not?” Then I would do what I wanted anyway, and it would often work. The more times that happened, the more times I thought, “I’m not going to listen to them.” That’s how I realized their “no’s” don’t define me.
In the mid-’80s, at the beginning of my magic career, a friend gave me the Mutilated Parasol. He was a white magician drawing his eyes to look Asian—and it occurred to me that I already have Asian eyes… maybe I should put an act together that reflects my culture! I was assisting him for no pay back then, so he gave me the Mutilated Parasol as a kind of compensation.