History Lessons from Netflix’s “The Brothers Sun”

“Without history… none of it has meaning.” If there is any singular detail of Taiwanese American creative work that I hyper-fixate on, it is the conflation of “Chinese” and “Taiwanese” identity. At its most egregious, converging Taiwanese and Chinese identity is an ongoing tactic by the Chinese Communist Party to erase Taiwan’s distinct identity and history. For decades now, the CCP has actively coerced corporations, academic institutions, and creatives to label Taiwan as a province…

Betelnut, Soldier-Wolf 檳榔,兵狼: Fiction by YakuzaBaby

Grand Prize Winner, Middle School Category Betelnut, Soldier-Wolf: 檳榔,兵狼  Echo sat on the edge of the cracked leather seat, clipping a curler into her bangs. What the hell was she doing in this dingy-ass store, every surface plastered with slippery tiles in dire need of grouting, a flickering neon sign out front with the words 檳榔 五十年老店 and a drawing of a clawed hand faded into it. Though she could not read the words, she found the strange hand amusing. Her phone vibrated…

“One Order of Dan Bing, Please”: Creative Non-Fiction by Tristan Tang

Grand Prize Winner, High School Category 老闆, 我要一份蛋餅!  Summers in Taiwan are brutal. I mean, think of the thrashing Da’an heat, cooking you alive like a fried egg from a breakfast shop. Or picture an army of mosquitoes, all nosediving towards you with their suckers out, ready to unleash an unrelenting week of itchiness.  Buzz.  The irritating sound made me sigh.  A mosquito flew in circles around my ear, taunting me for not killing it before it’d injected its…

Gravitational Pull: Fiction by Susan L. Lin

Honorable Mention, Adult Category In one of my earliest memories, my sister Lulu lies facedown on the living room sofa while our mother leans over her prone body, liberally applying a topical medication behind her ears. The skin there is puffy and raw, an open wound. “Your zǐzǐ pointed at the moon, and look what happened,” our mother says to me, though her gaze never strays from the task at hand. “Now you will know never to do the same.” Lulu whimpers into the seat cushion, and when…

Salty Like Tears: Creative Nonfiction by Grace Hwang Lynch

Grand Prize Winner, Adult Category March is the rainiest month in Taiwan. Not the afternoon cloudbursts of a tropical summer, nor the furious monsoons of early fall; in the time between winter and spring, the sky is a steady  stream of black. But this was the period when the boys and I could spend some extended time on the island. During that first family trip to Taiwan when the boys were seven and ten, the kids and  I stayed in Taipei after my husband flew back to the states for work. My job…

Wendy Cheng’s “ISLAND X” is essential reading for Taiwanese Americans

As editor-in-chief of TaiwaneseAmerican.org, I try to adhere to a level of curatorial prudence and precision of language -- because not every great book must be essential -- but I truly believe that Wendy Cheng's Island X is essential reading for Taiwanese Americans. It is an unprecedented origin story of Taiwanese Americans, lyrically charting not only where we come from but, crucially, why it matters.  In the final chapter, Becoming Taiwanese American, Cheng notes that her book captures…

S. Leo Chiang’s ISLAND IN BETWEEN: Observations of Kinmen and Liminality

Film documentarian S. Leo Chiang has been contemplating liminality, or in-betweenness, throughout his entire body of work, but "ISLAND IN BETWEEN" is his first film navigating the concept as it relates to his home country of Taiwan. From the official overview: "The rural Taiwanese outer islands of Kinmen sit merely 2 miles off the coast of China. Kinmen attracts tourists for its remains from the 1949 Chinese Civil War. It also marks the frontline for Taiwan in its escalating tension with China. Filmmaker…

Vanessa Hope’s INVISIBLE NATION: “China does not want the world to know our story.”

Vanessa Hope's "Invisible Nation" offers an affecting portrait of Taiwan through an impressive lineup of interviews, not just with President Tsai Ing-wen, though she's the most prominently featured, but with an array of historians, activists, academics, and politicians, thoughtfully interspersed with archive footage. Together, they offer a comprehensive narrative about Taiwan's many paradoxes: being globally influential but systematically excluded, existing in de facto independence but threatened…

Forms of Expression: An Interview with Artist Jocelyn Tsaih

There’s a good chance you’ve seen artist Jocelyn Tsaih’s work already– her signature cloud-like, amorphous, faceless figurines have been seen as article illustrations for the New York Times, on the cover of slant’d Magazine, and as murals in Hollywood, SF MoMA, and NYC’s Spotify office. If you’ve ever eaten at Mama Liang’s in the SF/Bay area, you may have noticed her subtle illustrations on their Taiwanese noodles-to-go packaging! After I discovered Tsaih’s work, I began…

Director’s Picks: Ten Taiwanese American Films to Watch

  What is Taiwanese American cinema? Films directed by Taiwanese Americans? Films about the relationship between nation and diaspora? Films that explore the specific experiences of American-born Taiwanese? Films that distinguish themselves culturally or politically from the more recognizable “Asian American” or “Chinese American” film? There’s not enough of a critical mass of films to answer that question with any meaningful conviction. But perhaps this ambiguity is what has…