July 21, 2023 — NEWARK, NJ — NJ PBS announced that Warren County’s Laura Zhang Choi is the latest subject of the network’s ongoing digital film series, 21, now streaming at MyNJPBS.org/21.

Produced by NJ PBS’s NJ Spotlight News team, The 21 Film Series investigates life in New Jersey and whether where you live affects how you live through the stories of change-making residents in each Garden State county. The short documentaries, 6 to 10 minutes, are accompanied online by snapshots providing statistics, resources and other essential information about each of New Jersey’s 21 counties.

The latest film, Warren County, features resident Laura Zhang Choi, who advocates on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community and is working to assure inclusion and representation for all ages across the county and beyond.

In the film, Choi recalls immigrating with her family to the United States from Shanghai, China, as a child and growing up in Queens, NY, surrounded by an immigrant community.

“The diversity was just what I thought was normal,” she says in the film. “When I went to college, it was a bit of a culture shock. All of a sudden, I felt like I didn’t belong and I was perceived as different. I think that’s when I started to investigate and to just really try to learn why some people always belonged and some people didn’t.”

When she first arrived here in Warren County, her oldest child was in grade school and one of the few students of color in the local school. Years later, when her own daughter came out as a transgender person, she became concerned about the acceptance and safety of not only her child, but all those who identified as such across the county.

“The world just was not safe for my kids to exist,” she says in the film. “My child was no longer in the school district, but I just wanted to make sure that it was safe for other kids.”

She joined the Greenwich Township School District school board and shares her passion for educational equity. She explains how important it is that students see a teacher that looks like them and hear stories that are not generally reflected in their textbooks in their curriculum. She notes that New Jersey is only the second state to mandate an Asian-American history curriculum. She was a strong advocate for its inclusion in her district and fights for LBGTQ+ rights in any way she can.

“I want to create communities where everyone feels like they belong and that all of their stories matter,” she says in the film. “My hope and my vision (is) not to wait for the world to change, but embody the change now that we need to create that normal within ourselves. I think the courageous work needs to continue to create those spaces because there’s always going to be resistance within a community interpersonally. We can all extend that love and that grace. And radical inclusion.”

To gain more insight into Choi’s experience, watch her interview on NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi this Friday at 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. on NJ PBS (check local listings).

On its way to a line-up of all 21 counties in New Jersey, the film series has told stories from:

Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Cape_May, Cumberland, Essex, Hunterdon, Hudson, Mercer, Morris, Monmouth, Ocean, Passaic, Salem, Somerset, and Sussex.

Major support for The 21 Film Series is provided in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the PSEG Foundation. The views expressed in the films do not directly reflect the views of either foundation.

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ABOUT NJ PBS 

NJ PBS, New Jersey’s public television network, brings quality arts, education, and public affairs programming to all 21 counties in the state. Headquartered at the Agnes Varis NJ PBS Studio in Newark, the network offers diverse local programs including American Songbook at NJPAC, Chat Box with David Cruz, NJ Business Beat, Here’s the Story, Drive By History, One-on-One with Steve Adubato, State of the Arts, Table for All with Buki Elegbede and Treasures of New Jersey and PBS favorites such as Nature, NOVA, Amanpour and Company and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Its award-winning newsroom, NJ Spotlight News, provides multiplatform reporting from across the Garden State on its weeknight newscast, NJ Spotlight News with Briana Vannozzi, and digitally via NJSpotlightNews.org, plus live news specials, community engagement events and daily newsletters. Its latest podcast, Hazard NJ, investigates the effect of climate change on NJ Superfund sites. The MyNJPBS.org network website offers streaming programs and free digital resources for educators via PBS LearningMedia New Jersey. NJ PBS is operated under an agreement with the state of New Jersey by Public Media NJ, Inc. (PMNJ), a non-profit affiliate of The WNET Group, the parent company of award-winning New York public television stations THIRTEEN and WLIW21.