Rediscovering My Heart Language: A Taiwanese American Mother’s Journey to Relearn Mandarin

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Like many Taiwanese Americans, Mandarin Chinese was the primary language spoken at home in my early childhood years, before formal public schooling rendered English as the dominant language to take over our household. Growing up, I have fond memories of being woken up by my mother’s soundtrack of soulful Mandarin pop ballads as she cooked rice porridge for us on early Sunday mornings. I remember being captivated by the background sounds of sword fights and long winded monologues of Chinese…

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Change in Atmosphere: Creative Non-Fiction by Evelyn Wu

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  It was someone else dressed in this striped red uniform, someone else who slung the same red backpack everyone was required to use on her shoulder, hiding the real reason she was trembling by the weight of the backpack. It wasn’t me who smiled a watery smile with a pounding heart, social anxiety kicking in stronger than before. It was my first day of sixth grade, back to school after abruptly leaving my 5th grade class back in America. When Covid hit, I refused the masks and social…

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“Abbott Elementary meets Crazy Rich Asians, but less crazy and a lot less rich”: Kristi Hong (“The Teacher’s Match”) in conversation with Michelle Young

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Kristi Hong, a pen name for a Taiwanese American author from San Diego, has published a new book, The Teacher’s Match, from Harlequin publishers. She sat down with Michelle Young, author of The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland (HarperOne), to talk about the book, writing romance as an Asian American, her upbringing in the Midwest, and the influences on her writing.   M: What inspired you to write fiction - specifically in the romance genre?…

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On Stubborn Roots: Creative Nonfiction by Charis Chu

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藕斷絲連 is a Chinese idiom. It roughly translates to The broken lotus is connected by its fibered thread. 阿婆, my grandmother, described it to me one night in the dining room of what used to be our apartment, tucked away in the hills of Taipei. I was probably tracing sheet after sheet of Chinese characters, painstakingly going over each brushstroke with an incorrect pencil grip, fostering the bump on my ring finger that still exists today. Homework took hours back then. I can see it—me,…

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Transforming Memory Into Storytelling: Cindy Chang in conversation with Jocelyn Chung

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It requires vulnerability and courage to transform memories into storytelling. Especially when those memories are mixed with pain and shame. For many of us, growing up Taiwanese American meant learning to save face. We hold our secrets deep inside of ourselves, carefully crafting the image we want others to perceive. We do this for survival, we do this to grasp normalcy, or maybe we do this because it’s all we know how to do. I had the honor of speaking with Cindy Chang about her new book,…

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A Republic of Taiwan: Breaking the Chains

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Editor's Note: A Republic of Taiwan: Breaking the Chains was submitted by high schooler Chloe Wu Shih to the 2024 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes and recommended by judge Charles Yu as noteworthy for publication. We are pleased to share this impressive, deeply researched piece representing the views of the writer; in particular, Shih notes that Taiwan's history traces back to the roots of the Republic of China though it is our editorial position that Taiwan has a 6,000-year…

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Rude: Creative Nonfiction by Colette Chang

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The mallard duck is everywhere. It is the ancestor of all duck species. Although their mating season is not until spring, mallard ducks form relationships much earlier, courting in the winter, and eventually laying eggs in the summer. When ducklings are first born, they are all the same yellow-bellied babies. They live harmoniously as adolescents in their separate spheres. For the first months of their lives, mallard ducklings waddle as a clutch behind their mother. As equals.  At ten months,…

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In the Name of Scientific Progress: Fiction by Susan L. Lin

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The Present  Two years ago today, The Present saw its first Runaway. Soon after, the second followed suit. Then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. By now, they numbered in the tens of thousands. The tech had been a long time coming, but Sunny still felt nothing but dread when she first heard news of a device that boasted the ability to transport living things back into The Past. Phoenix Industries, a private research and experimental laboratory with locations all over the world, had reportedly been…

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“the most Taiwanese thing about me” & Other Poems by Juliana Chang

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the most Taiwanese thing about me after katie mansfield   not the tub of bean curd in my freezer. not the Lao Gan Ma chili oil I drink by the spoonful like my Ba. not how I fish pork blood out of my soup to drop into my brother’s bowl, not any acre of my mouth, really.   not my two passports or my two names. not the yearbook photo retake  that made twins of me in 2nd grade, Ting Wei and Juliana printed out side by side. not the time I made…

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