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

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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 or political dissent. It is the period in which my grandparents grew up. And yet, growing up myself, I never heard them speak of it. The fog of that era was not only cinematic. It was real, and…

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A Pilgrimage: Creative Nonfiction by Cindy Cheng

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize - Honorable Mention, Adult Category I, Pilgrim "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,” Shanthum said in his familiar, British upper-class accent, genuinely bewildered. I felt simultaneously seen and relieved that this little speech was happening at the end, not the beginning of the two weeks the…

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Apology Flowers: Fiction by Laurie Fang

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize, Grand Prize Winner - Middle Grade Category A graveyard is where the most flowers are given—where love is offered when it is too late to be received. For souls who are recognized once people realize they’re really gone. Some offerings, the others apologies made of nostalgia. Though she wonders if there is a graveyard where she's able to lay flowers to the ground for herself. For a culture that she once tried to outgrow and a language…

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Assembly Required: Functioning Woman – Fiction by Serena Shih

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize, Grand Prize Winner - High School Category This box includes:  ONE preassembled body: upright, not yet stabilized.  ONE voice: factory setting - unfiltered.  ONE ambition: expandable beyond recommended capacity  ONE emotional core: highly responsive to external pressure.  ONE smile: flexible, long wear.  ONE mirror: pre-distorted.  ONE drawer: sealed at factory.  And a surplus of screws labeled:  SHOULD  GOOD…

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Home / 故鄉 : Fiction by Susan Hong

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize - Grand Prize Winner, College Category 一份蔥油餅。謝謝。  The girl at the stand regards Natalie with a flattened expression. She would be pretty were her eyes not so artificially narrowed, her lips not pressed so thin, Natalie thinks. Or, rather, this is probably what Natalie’s mother would think. Every day, Natalie is coming to realize more and  more that what she has always thought was the little voice in her head…

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Last Night in Taipei: Fiction by Esther Fung

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2026 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize – Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category Yang Qiuyue said she would buy the oranges herself.  Because her husband had always liked oranges and even if he couldn’t eat them anymore, he might still want to suck on them. But Rachel — that was what her daughter called herself now, after that girl with the hair from the American TV show — could not be relied on to properly choose fruit. She’d find the measliest ones and overpay for…

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Leaving the United States Made Me Feel More Taiwanese American

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“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 because it was really an identity question: “Which world do you belong to?”  And the answer to that wasn’t nearly as clear as an origin story. This identity crisis is something I’ve struggled…

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Crying in the Taipei 101 Food Court: Two Transpacific Adoptees Talk (Re-)Learning Mandarin in Taiwan

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We hadn’t meant to cry in the food court below Taipei — and during a Saturday lunch rush hour at that.  Author Stefany Valentine and I connected online in 2024 before she published her debut novel, First Love Language. As Asian American adoptees — her being Taiwanese American and me being Chinese American living in Taiwan — we bonded quickly over Taiwan and our longing for adoptee representation in young adult books.  Fast forward one year and suddenly we were meeting in person…

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In Grief, Returning to my Roots in Search of my Father’s Childhood

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My father’s final resting place was on a grassy knoll overlooking the Los Angeles skyline, 7,000 miles from his childhood home.  Since he immigrated to California in the 1970s, he’d only returned twice to Xingang, a rural township in southern Taiwan, flying over eleven hours across the Pacific Ocean each way. These trips were also separated almost a decade apart. Once, for his mother’s funeral service before I was born. The last time, he brought my mother; me, nine-years-old; and my little…

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Finding the Treasure: How National Treasure Helped Me Rediscover My Taiwanese American Story

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Watching Ben Gates defend his family’s name in National Treasure felt eerily familiar — like watching someone wrestle with the same questions of heritage and credibility that many Taiwanese Americans quietly face. I know... National Treasure probably isn’t the first film you’d expect to spark a reflection on identity. But beneath the puzzles and chase scenes, it’s a story about legacy, belief, and the search for meaning, themes that have quietly shaped my own journey. “This…

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