Oliver Lin’s short film “To Add Oil” interrogates identity and duty

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Feature images provided by Oliver Lin or from his website. Today, we’re incredibly excited to be launching TaiwaneseAmerican.org’s “New Creatives” initiative, a series that seeks to highlight up-and-coming Taiwanese/Taiwanese American artists in various fields of creative artistry. Our first guest is Oliver Lin, a Taiwanese filmmaker and senior at the Ringling College of Art and Design studying film. Oliver grew up in Taiwan and came across video editing and cinematography at a young…

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“Amah Faraway” celebrates the joys of bravery and gathering at last

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] Author Margaret Chiu Greanias holding a copy of "Amah Faraway" with TaiwaneseAmerican.org founder Ho Chie Tsai[/caption] If you told Margaret Chiu Greanias two decades ago that she would become a published author one day, telling stories based on her own experiences and sometimes even about herself—she would’ve never believed it. Yet a good number of years into what she proudly dubs her “second career,” Greanias has been able to connect…

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What I Wish Li Bai Knew (Creative Fiction)

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Everything I wrote was tinged with the Li Bai poem, "Quiet Night Thoughts." On a whim, I Googled Li Bai and learned that in 725, he ventured from his Sichuan home at 24 years old to wander and write. I also come from a family that left Sichuan, though we settled in Taiwan. Later in life, Li Bai was exiled from China. This time, he was condemned to roam and his writing faltered. One day, drunk and homesick on his boat, he grasped at the moon’s reflection in the water. He tipped over and drowned.…

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Now accepting submissions: 2022 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes celebrate Taiwanese American student writers

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TaiwaneseAmerican.org is pleased to announce the 2022 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes. Created in 2021 in collaboration with Taiwanese American author Charles Yu, the Prizes are intended to encourage and recognize creative literary work by Taiwanese American students, and to foster discussion and community around such work. This year, in addition to high school and college categories, applicants currently in 6th-8th grade may apply for the middle school category. Submissions…

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Nnadi Samuel: “Subject Lessons” (Poems)

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We are so honored to share "Subject Lessons," a collection of poetry by Nnadi Samuel. Samuel is a recipient of the prestigious Falun Gong Poetry Prize, which got him a two-year scholarship in National Dong Hwa College in Hualien to study Chinese Language & Literature. Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly…

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Dignity, Belonging, and Meaning-Making in a Pandemic: What Learning Taiwanese Taught Me in a Season of Loss and Hate

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] FEATURE PHOTO PROVIDED BY AUTHOR[/caption] When the Covid-19 pandemic hit the East Coast last spring, I unexpectedly found myself at home for an extended stretch of time. For me, quarantining with family meant that daily walks with my dad and weekly drives to a local Taiwanese bakery became a natural time for me to learn more Taiwanese — something I had been trying to do on-and-off for quite some time. As weeks turned into months, my vocabulary…

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“Elegy for a Century Egg” and Other Poems by Katy Hargett-Hsu

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  Kathryn Hargett-Hsu 徐凯蒂 is an incoming MFA candidate in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. A 2018 Best New Poet, she is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, Belgrade Art Studio, and UAB. Most recently, she received the Barksdale-Maynard Prize in Poetry and was selected as a National YoungArts Foundation Finalist in Writing. Find her in Field Notes on Survival (2020), Best New Poets (2018), Anomaly, The…

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Huiru May Huang: On Encountering a Stranger  

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My students were putting on Little Red Riding Hood today and I was the Big Bad Wolf, so I showed up to Sister Marianne’s door in my wolf costume. Sister Marianne is my ninety year-old neighbor. She works at the church next to my school, so we’d walk to work together every day, rain or shine. We wouldn’t say much to each other, but her petite presence always puts my mind at ease. Prolonged silences like these used to drive me out of my skin, but I’ve grown to understand the solitude that…

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Now at the Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival: “Taiwan Equals Love”

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FEATURE PHOTOS FROM THE HONOLULU RAINBOW FILM FESTIVAL PRESS KIT Taiwan Equals Love will be streaming free from now until August 14th on GagaOOLala, Asia’s largest on-demand platform for LGBTQ content. English subtitles are available.  It’s not June, but that doesn’t mean that we’re done celebrating Pride. This summer, the Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival is holding its 32nd annual film screening from July 30th to August 15th, celebrating and raising awareness for the LGBTQ community.…

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Stamp Thief, by Ying-Ann (Annie) Chen

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FEATURE PHOTO ADAPTED FROM Dave Weatherall on Unsplash The fire ate loudly. It spit ashes everywhere as it gorged down our offerings. “The gods are hungry today,” my grandma warned. The fire burst in a sudden uproar, slapping its chopsticks down on the lady susan, demanding more. The offerings were for our ancestors, why were the gods taking what wasn’t for them? I tried to feed the flames a paper iPhone, but my grandma jerked my hand back.   “You are too greedy,” she chastised…

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