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TaiwaneseAmerican.org

  • Home
    • About
    • Community Organizations
  • Submissions
  • Stories
    • Interviews
    • Perspectives
    • Arts & Entertainment
    • Community Orgs
    • Food & Travel
    • Social Issues & Politics
  • Projects
  • 2026 Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club
    • Book Club Discussion Guides
  • Creative Writing Prizes
  • Gift Guides
  • Bookshop
  • Parenting Resources
  • Contact
  • Donate
Now Streaming on Instagram: "Vultures," a Medical Conspiracy Thriller Now Streaming on Instagram: "Vultures," a Medical Conspiracy Thriller
Taiwanese Chef Eric Sze Brings Honesty & "Intentional Fusion" to His First Cookbook Taiwanese Chef Eric Sze Brings Honesty & "Intentional Fusion" to His First Cookbook
"Beneath the Same Round Moon": Q&A with Debut Author Jasmine Fang "Beneath the Same Round Moon": Q&A with Debut Author Jasmine Fang
They’ve Always Come to Us, and We’ve Always Stayed: Fiction by Eddie Lo They’ve Always Come to Us, and We’ve Always Stayed: Fiction by Eddie Lo
To My Date at Wonder Bar: Creative Nonfiction by Christine Huang To My Date at Wonder Bar: Creative Nonfiction by Christine Huang

Featured Stories

Arts & Culture

Inner Voices of the Fog: A Reflection on A Foggy Tale

Guest Contributor: John Lee 李榮恩 A Foggy Tale, 《大濛》is set during Taiwan's White Terror era, the long stretch of martial law from 1947 to 1987 during which thousands of Taiwanese were imprisoned, disappeared, or executed under the Kuomintang government for suspected communist sympathies…

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Creative Writing Prizes

Charles Yu, Grace Loh Prasad, Alvina Ling, Shawna Yang Ryan, Averylin Cummins select 2026 Creative Writing Prize Winners

We are thrilled to announce the 2026 cohort of honorable mentions, finalists, and grand prize winners of the Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes, established in partnership with TaiwaneseAmerican.org in honor of Charles Yu’s parents, longstanding leaders in the Taiwanese American…

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Perspectives

Leaving the United States Made Me Feel More Taiwanese American

“But where are you really from?”  That’s the age-old question so many of us Asian-Americans have received throughout our lives living in the U.S. And while many have various objections to the principle of the question, for me, the real reason that question used to get under my skin was…

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Eric Sze @esze.e is well known for his “authenti Eric Sze @esze.e is well known for his “authentically unauthentic” dishes. Born and raised in Taipei before heading to the United States for college, he [interrogates] what is considered “Taiwanese” food through his experimental cooking. ⁠ He first learned to cook the Taiwanese dishes he missed while in New York; now he plays with the cooking techniques he knows and the ingredients he understands. Sze flips them on their head, making something new that maybe could’ve only been created between Taipei and New York City. (See: BDSM chicken, otherwise known as as “debrined, deboned, soy milk chicken.”)⁠ ⁠ But this cooking journey of “intentional fusion” didn’t come without its stumbles, as Sze recounts in his first — and most likely last — cookbook, Taiwanese?, which publishes in October and is now available for preorders.⁠ The cookbook features 75 recipes, personalized travel itineraries, and rambling reflections on things like the rocky opening of the now-shuttered 886 (RIP). “[I’m] proud of all the stumbles we’ve taken because we’re always picking ourselves back up,” Sze tells guest contributor Sara Conway.⁠ ⁠ Read the full conversation, linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/09/eric-sze-taiwanese-cookbook/⁠ ⁠ Photos by Alex Lau.
It's so heartwarming to see a new and growing coll It's so heartwarming to see a new and growing collection of heritage-inspired picture books for the next generation of Taiwanese Americans and beyond. ⁠ Find the Mid-Autumn Festival collection at our Bookshop (linked in bio) or your local public library!⁠ (in order of slide appearance) - ⁠ 01 - Beneath the Same Round Moon - written by @jasmineifang / ill. by @vuon.illustration⁠ 02 - Miya's Mooncakes - written by @crystal.z.lee / ill. by @allie_su588⁠ 03 - Mixed-Up Mooncakes - written by @christinamatula & @ricalyonswrites / ill. by @tracysubisak⁠ 04 - Thanking the Moon - written & ill. by @pacylin⁠ 05 - A Big Mooncake for Little Star - written & ill. by @pacylin⁠ 06 - The Shadow in the Moon - written by @christinamatula / ill. by @pearlperoni⁠
The September pick for our Taiwanese American Memo The September pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club is Kim Liao’s “Where Every Ghost Has a Name：A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence” SYNOPSIS：In her debut memoir, “Where Every Ghost Has a Name,” Kim Liao @the_kimlet travels to Taiwan in 2010, more than 60 years after her grandfather, Thomas Liao 廖文毅, the leader of the Taiwanese independence movement, was arrested by authorities there. Not long after Thomas Liao’s arrest, other members of the Liao family were arrested and had their land seized; but several family members, including the author’s grandmother, were forced into exile. ”Where Every Ghost Has a Name“ spans the year that Liao spent in Taiwan wading her way through her family’s history, which, she quickly learns, has been largely erased or hidden away by the KMT government. This historical and cultural silence around post-WWII Taiwan served as an uncanny mirror for the silence that surrounded the author’s own family after they arrived in the United States, lasting all the way into Liao’s adult life. Join us and author Kim Liao on Sunday, September 20 @ 6PM PT for a guided discussion（Google Meets)! RSVP at the link in bio.
We were so grateful to speak with Jasmine Fang abo We were so grateful to speak with Jasmine Fang about her debut picture book, Beneath the Same Round Moon: A Mooncake Festival Story. The story, richly illustrated by Rong Pham and Vinh Nguyen, offers a fresh and topical take on a familiar tradition while thoughtfully expanding its resonance to include families who may have never celebrated or even known of the Mid-Autumn Festival. With tenderness and compassion, Jasmine enriches our understanding of what it means to draw close and forge connection even amidst change.⁠ ⁠ Read the full Q&A here: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/08/beneath-the-same-round-moon-jasmine-fang/⁠ ⁠ Words by @jasmineifang | Illustrations by @vuon.illustration | Publisher @beamingbooksmn⁠ ⁠ Beneath the Same Round Moon launches on September 1 - pre-order now!⁠ And for those in the Bay Area, Jasmine will have the following book events next month:⁠ Sep 12 10:30am launch⁠ On Waverly SF @onwaverly⁠ ⁠ Sep 13 10:30am⁠ Linden Tree Books, Los Altos @lindentreereads⁠ ⁠ Sep 19 1:30pm⁠ Fairyland Children’s Festival, Oakland
A Story That Lives Within US: Ada — Volume II is A Story That Lives Within US: Ada — Volume II is a historical and cultural preservation exhibition curated by Tzu-Ying (Naomi) Chan. Featuring 17 artists from Japan, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ecuador, and the United States, the exhibition explores Taiwanese immigrant experiences in New York during the 1980s and 1990s through contemporary art, oral histories, and written narratives. ⁠ ⁠ It will be on view at Crossing Art @crossingart in Chelsea from August 13–26, 2026, with artist talks, workshops, and guided tours. See @storyofus.ada for more information on upcoming events!
From longtime contributor, educator-activist, and From longtime contributor, educator-activist, and former TaiwanPlus producer Eric Tsai:⁠ For many people around the world, their first introduction to Taiwan comes through headlines about military tensions, semiconductors, or elections. Those stories matter, but they are only pieces of a much larger story. Taiwan is also its history, its people, its culture, its contradictions, and the everyday experiences that shape a vibrant society.⁠ TaiwanPlus @taiwanplus was created to help tell Taiwan’s story to global audiences, not just in response to flashpoints of crisis, but with the depth and context that Taiwan deserves. For many in the diaspora, it has become a resource to better understand our heritage, explain Taiwan to friends and colleagues, and participate in conversations that extend far beyond geopolitics.⁠ ⁠ As proposals move forward in the Legislative Yuan that threaten TaiwanPlus’s funding, I hope we take a moment to reflect on what this work has made possible.⁠ ⁠ Has TaiwanPlus ever helped you understand Taiwan a little better? Helped you explain Taiwan to someone else? Helped you connect with a part of your own identity? If so, I hope you will share it in the comments below. These stories are some of the clearest evidence that this work matters.
The August pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir The August pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club is Jessica J. Lee's "Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family's Past."⁠ ⁠ SYNOPSIS: A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew.⁠ Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.⁠ ⁠ Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre-shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.⁠ ⁠ 🖥️ Join us on Sunday, August 16 6PM PT for a guided discussion (Google Meets)! RSVP at the link in bio.⁠
“I want to be an architect after I graduate.” “I want to be an architect after I graduate.” That’s what Ruo remembered saying before the beatings came. ⁠ ⁠ His father was furious. “Have the Japanese bastards gotten into your head!” The next morning, his father took him on a six-hour trek to the port of Kīrun. They walked from the city all the way to the water, even passing a man without a uniform riding a bicycle. “He bought that with blood money,” his father muttered and said nothing more. When they arrived at the plaza, his father blurted out, “Now tell me what you see!” as if he had been suppressing the words the entire walk. ⁠ ⁠ The port held rows of bulky steel ships. Sailors in white hustled up and down their ramps. “Ferry boats, gunboats, patrol boats…” ⁠ Ruo stared at the flags mounted on each ship’s stern—a red sun with rays bursting outward against a white field. Every morning at school, the class would salute a flag similar to the one, but without the rays. ⁠ ⁠ “That’s not the point! What about that? Do you see?” His father pointed to a row of cargo ships, each loaded with layers upon layers of timber. ⁠ ⁠ “Those are thousand-year-old trees from our sacred mountains. And they’re going to ship them all to Japan to build some stupid shrines,” he said. “They take and take and take. They level our forests, and they’ll eventually leave Taiwan with nothing!” ⁠ ⁠ Read the full piece, linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/07/theyve-always-come-to-us-fiction-eddie-lo/
The July pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir Bo The July pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club is Marijane Huang's "Beyond Two Worlds: A Taiwanese American Adoptee's Memoir & Search for Identity" ⁠and we're thrilled to be joined by Marijane for a live Q&A!⁠ ⁠ SYNOPSIS: "Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Marijane was adopted by an American military family at four months old. She grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in the deep South where hers was the only Asian face among a majority of white. Raised to believe she was Vietnamese and Japanese, she never doubted her ethnicity, until one day, she found her lost adoption papers. This discovery unloosed secrets that had been buried for decades, causing her to question her identity. With brave determination, Marijane set out on a quest to reconstruct her past and resurrect a birth heritage that had long been forsaken. Her journey took her halfway across the world to reunite with her birth family and a culture she realized she had longed for her entire life. Beyond Two Worlds is a poignant telling of one woman's search for identity and belonging despite insurmountable odds, and is an inspiring true story for those seeking to connect to their original families."⁠ ⁠ 🖥️ Join us on Sunday, July 19 6PM PT for a guided discussion (Google Meets)! RSVP at the link in bio.⁠
"It’s 8:30 pm, and I’m half an hour late to me "It’s 8:30 pm, and I’m half an hour late to meet you. I spot you smoking out on the curb in front of Wonder Bar, a queer bar I’d Googled dozens of times over the past decade, always too nervous to set foot in it. You’re rocking a low fade, oversized button-up, and cuffed jeans. We’d matched on Bumble a week or so before, and I knew from a short video call that I liked the sandpaper sound of your voice. Out of habit, I give you the same warm hug I give everyone in Taiwan, the kind that’s meant for family, and you return it with a stiffer, one-armed embrace.⁠ ⁠ Inside the sleek, blue-lit bar, the AC is ferocious. I can’t blame them; I’ve spent nearly every summer break of my life in Taiwan, but the temperatures this year are the highest I can remember. We complain about heat exhaustion to break the ice. Across the room hangs a neon pink sign that reads, I love pussy."⁠ ⁠ Read the full piece, linked here and in bio: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/07/to-my-date-at-wonder-bar/⁠ ⁠ Christine Huang 黃凱琳 is a queer writer and facilitator and the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants. Her work, which often explores insurgency, language, rage, and desire, has appeared in The Offing, ANMLY, Pinch, many wor(l)ds, and Foglifter. She is a 2026 Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, and her collaborative project with poet Adam Ahmed won Black Warrior Review’s 2026 Experimental Forms Contest judged by George Abraham.
The June pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir Bo The June pick for our Taiwanese American Memoir Book Club is Hua Hsu's @huahsu"STAY TRUE." ⁠ ⁠ SYNOPSIS: "In the eyes of eighteen-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken—with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity—is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, who makes ’zines and haunts Bay Area record shops, Ken represents all that he defines himself in opposition to. The only thing Hua and Ken have in common is that, however they engage with it, American culture doesn’t seem to have a place for either of them.⁠ ⁠ But despite his first impressions, Hua and Ken become friends, a friendship built on late-night conversations over cigarettes, long drives along the California coast, and the successes and humiliations of everyday college life. And then violently, senselessly, Ken is gone, killed in a carjacking, not even three years after the day they first meet.⁠ ⁠ Determined to hold on to all that was left of one of his closest friends—his memories—Hua turned to writing. Stay True is the book he’s been working on ever since. A coming-of-age story that details both the ordinary and extraordinary, Stay True is a bracing memoir about growing up, and about moving through the world in search of meaning and belonging."⁠ ⁠ 🖥️ Join us on Sunday, June 21 6PM PT for a guided discussion (Google Meets)! RSVP at the link in bio.⁠ 📚We're pleased to partner with AAPI-led, mission-driven @yellowperilbooks to offer 10% off our memoir selections with code TABOOKCLUB10 and 5% off books by Taiwanese Americans with code TWNAMERICANS. 5% of proceeds from these texts will be donated to @taiwaneseam_org.⁠ ⁠ Tag us on your reading journey at @taiwaneseam_org #TABookClub!⁠
New from guest contributor John Lee: a soulful and New from guest contributor John Lee: a soulful and deeply moving reflection on watching “A Foggy Tale” at a Taiwanese American community screening in Boston.⁠ ⁠ “There is something that art can do that memory cannot: it can give shape to what was too large or too dangerous or too painful to be spoken aloud. It can say, to the people who lived through something and to the descendants who only half-understand it: this happened, and it was real, and it mattered, and you are not alone in it.”⁠ ⁠ Read John’s full reflection at the link in our bio or here:⁠ https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/05/inner-voices-of-the-fog-a-reflection-on-a-foggy-tale/⁠ ⁠ “A Foggy Tale” begins streaming globally on Netflix on May 27!
Such a treat to bring our Taiwanese American Book Such a treat to bring our Taiwanese American Book Fair to the @stanfordtcs annual Night Market and share some of our favorite reads (and to gush about Taiwan Travelogue!!) We’ve been so inspired by the warm reception to the magic of reading, storytelling, and Taiwanese American literature. We love when all kinds of people can find pieces of themselves in these stories ❤️
New on TaiwaneseAmerican.org: a travelogue by Cind New on TaiwaneseAmerican.org: a travelogue by Cindy Cheng.⁠ "It's an absolutely ridiculous way to travel. We don’t even send you a real itinerary, just an outline with hardly any information. You show so much trust in us by just showing up."⁠ ⁠ Cindy Cheng is a Taiwanese American writer with training as a political economist. Originally from the Bay Area, she has spent the last decade living in Munich, Germany but has also previously made homes in Grenoble, France, Washington, DC, Durham, North Carolina, and Kunming, China.⁠ ⁠ Read the full piece: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/05/a-pilgrimage-creative-nonfiction-by-cindy-cheng/
After a reading and deliberation period, our judge After a reading and deliberation period, our judges (Charles Yu, Grace Loh Prasad, Alvina Ling, Shawna Yang Ryan, and guest Poetry reader Averylin Cummins) have made their selections for the 2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize. ⁠ Since its inception, the prize has received hundreds of exquisitely creative and incisive entries. While we’re grateful to honor exceptional work, we’re even more proud to encourage the development of Taiwanese American writers across all ages and stages. ⁠ Through complementary programs for the prize such as “Office Hours” and “Meet the Judges,” we hope to foster a writing community grounded not only in achievement, but also in connection, personal fulfillment, and joy.⁠ Our sincerest thanks to all who participated (and endured some errors in the email announcements!), and our heartiest congratulations to those who placed this year.⁠ Read the grand prize winning entries NOW on TaiwaneseAmerican.org (“Creative Writing Prize” section).⁠ Link to full announcement: https://www.taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/05/2026-creative-writing-prize-winners/
About

Founded in 2006, TaiwaneseAmerican.org is a web portal site highlighting many of the interesting people, events and organizations that make up Taiwanese America. It is both a volunteer-driven website and a non-profit organization that intends to connect and promote those who identify with the Taiwanese identity, heritage, or culture. By establishing our niche within the broader Asian Pacific American and mainstream communities, we hope to collectively contribute to the wonderful and diverse mosaic that America represents.

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