We Build Museums So We Can Someday Stop Building Cages: A Taiwanese American Reflection from the Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park

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This essay was originally written for my personal newsletter, but I hope its reflections on heritage, human rights, and ethical imagination may resonate with the broader Taiwanese American community. 🫶 Hello from Taipei, where I’ve collected so many museum pamphlets and cute paraphernalia that I am tempted to start a junk journal (though now that I think about it, this Substack is an intellectual junk journal of sorts). I’m so grateful to have also spent time this week with people I’ve…

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Keng-lâm Su-iⁿ: Writing A New Chapter for Tâi-gí

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Meet the educator-activists turning the tide on Mandarin hegemony to nurture a new generation of Taiwanese speakers and storytellers. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2048"] From L to R: Hô Phè-chin, Lûi Bêng-hàn, Tīⁿ Têng-têng, Ong Úi-pek[/caption] Founded in 2024, Keng-lâm Su-iⁿ (The Mosei Academy of Taiwanese Language and Literacy) has quickly become a dynamic and influential forces in Tâi-gí (Taiwanese) language revival. Rooted in a pragmatic praxis, the collective’s…

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Winnie M Li’s “WHAT WE LEFT UNSAID” and California Book Tour!

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WHAT WE LEFT UNSAID By Winnie M Li Excerpt from p.102 - 103 In this passage, Bonnie and Alex, two Taiwanese-American sisters in their 40s, are sharing a hotel room on a cross-country road trip. They stop to reflect upon their mother.  ‘I guess Mom must have been like that with us.  Like, we were her whole purpose or living?’ ‘Yeah,’ Bonnie answers after a moment, releasing Alex from the hug. ‘And then we all moved away.’ They sit side by side, stewing equally in their…

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Speaking in Layers: How Anne Is Building a Taiwanese Language Movement from New York to Nantou

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Editor’s Note: In this article, we use the terms “Taigi” and “Taiwanese” interchangeably to refer specifically to Taiwanese Hokkien, also known as Taigi or Tâi-gí (台語). While commonly spoken in many Taiwanese households and often associated with Taiwanese cultural identity, it is important to recognize that Taigi is not currently the official language of Taiwan, nor is it the sole language spoken by those who identify as Taiwanese. Taiwan is home to a rich diversity of languages,…

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Where we come from, who we stand with: A Conversation with Professor Hsin-I Cheng (Part 2/2)

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(Link to Part 1: Citizenship, Belonging, and the Emotional Legacies of Immigration) Part 2: The Model Minority Myth and the Politics of Proximity Editor's Introduction: In Part 1, we explored how first-generation Taiwanese immigrants often understand citizenship as something earned through discipline and compliance— a framework shaped by colonial history, martial law, and immigration regimes. But these beliefs intersect with powerful narratives like the model minority myth, which casts Asian…

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Where we come from, who we stand with: A Conversation with Professor Hsin-I Cheng (Part 1/2)

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Part 1: Citizenship, Belonging, and the Emotional Legacies of Immigration This interview has also been translated to Mandarin Chinese (Hanzi) and can be viewed here.  Editor's Introduction: As political crises unfold, they rarely do so in a vacuum—and neither do our responses to them. I have been thinking fervently of how the different reactions to statements like this within our own community illuminate a lack of common ground for understanding. While I do not expect or want everyone…

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Charles Yu, Grace Loh Prasad, Alvina Ling select 2025 Creative Writing Prize Winners

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We are thrilled to announce the 2025 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 community. Now in its fourth year, the prize continues to grow in reach and resonance, with writer Grace Loh Prasad joining the judging panel this year alongside returning judges Charles Yu and Alvina…

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To Speak in Many Tongues Is to Fight on Many Fronts: Bonnie Jin on Labor, Diaspora, and the Politics of Belonging

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Taiwanese American Bonnie Jin is one of the most brilliant voices of our generation, lucidly alchemizing identity into strategy as a multilingual union organizer and storyteller. In a conversation for TaiwaneseAmerican.org, we talk about how diasporic experiences can inform a labor movement rooted in empathy and collective care, and the kind of Taiwanese American stories we want to tell – and for whom.  When asked about her Taiwanese American lineage, Bonnie begins with an ancestral origin…

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[中/EN] In solidarity with migrants facing ICE violence⁠

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As a Taiwanese American, I stand in solidarity with migrants and asylum seekers targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other violent apparatuses of detention and deportation. Our community’s presence in the United States is not incidental—it is the result of layered and often painful migrations shaped by militarism, colonial displacement, authoritarian repression, and aspirations of survival and self-determination. Whether arriving as international students denied…

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Taiwanese American Book Fair: TaiwaneseAmerican.org at the 2025 Taiwanese American Cultural Festival

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This past weekend, we were so pleased to gather nearly a dozen local Taiwanese American authors and illustrators for our largest-yet "Taiwanese American Book Fair" at the 2025 Taiwanese American Cultural Festival in San Francisco's Union Square, hosted by TAP-SF. This year, we partnered with On Waverly, a new and already-beloved Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) centered shop and creative space located in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown. Founded in 2023 by sisters Cynthia and Jennifer…

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