Margarita Alcantara-Tan is a loud and proud "Queer Pilipina Mestiza" and the editress of the ëzine
Bamboo Girl which she founded in 1995 as a tool to explore her identity as a mixed blood Pilipina. She is also a performance artist, videomaker and community activist within the Pilipino, Asian Pacific Islander (API), feminist and lesbian gay communities.
She is co-founder of the Campaign for Safer Subway Stations, launched in response to a rape and beating robbery of an Asian American woman, as well Kilawin Kolektibo, a New York lesbian/bi/transgender Pilipina collective. Alcantara-Tan has also been active with the Gabriela Network, a Philippine women's solidarity organization and the New York Chapter of Pilipino Civil Rights Activists.
She addresses numerous topics through lectures, spoken word and performance art, zinemaking, alternative media, the exoticizing of the Asian American female, feminist issues, immigrant women's issues, women and labor, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) consciousness, forms of creative expression, and martial arts/self defense.
