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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cóng mei guo lai de, by Vanessa Wan

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FEATURE PHOTO PROVIDED BY VANESSA WAN When I was little, I thought I was Chinese. That’s what my parents said when we were asked the inevitable question: “What are you?”  I later learned we were not Chinese.  Assigned to research the flag of my parents’ home country for class, I went home to find out that I needed to check out books not on China but on Taiwan. As it turned out, my parents simply went along with people’s assumptions that we were Chinese because it was “easier.”…

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“Danny, Danny”: Meet San Francisco filmmaker Huan Cheng

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FEATURE PHOTOS COURTESY OF HUAN CHENG, 2021 San Francisco-based filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Huan Cheng explores the loneliness of the immigrant experience in her short film Danny, Danny. Cheng, born in Taiwan, draws upon her own experiences of arriving in the United States as a young adult in Danny, Danny, which screened at CAAMFest this year and The Method Fest in 2020, and is now available to audiences again. Cheng is a member of the Hollywood Professional Association 2021 Young Entertainment…

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Convenience Store Encounters, by Katie Chen

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HONORABLE MENTION, HIGH SCHOOL CATEGORY The alarm beeps. And where there is no response or movement from the lump of blankets on the bed, it beeps again, with increased urgency. And beeps again. And vibrates with increased frequency. And when it seems like the alarm is about to vibrate itself off the counter it’s sitting on, a hand emerges itself from its home on the bed and smashes the alarm clock hard. Twice. Finally, there is blissful silence. It is 6:31 AM.  Carla stumbles out of her…

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Anne Hu’s Short Film “Lunchbox” Unpacks a Complicated Mother-Daughter Relationship

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Independent filmmaker Anne Hu is cooking up a new project rooted in her own experience growing up Taiwanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. Titled Lunchbox, this short drama will feature modern-day scenes of a woman cooking the foods from her mother’s cookbook, interspersed with childhood memories of her attempts to fit in with her classmates--and the effects this had on her relationship with her mother.  Writer Grace Hwang Lynch chatted with Anne to find out more…

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Lithification, and Other Processes, by Dri Chiu Tattersfield

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GRAND PRIZE WINNING ENTRY, COLLEGE CATEGORY “In this subtle and imaginative story, Dri Chiu Tattersfield explores questions of identity, family, foreignness and the body. The writing is nuanced and careful and emotionally grounded, evoking a sense of place and depth of feeling. This is an accomplished work by a promising voice.” -Shawna Yang Ryan and Charles Yu, co-judges of the 2021 Betty L. Yu & Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prizes. The day my body started disappearing began with…

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Judges Charles Yu and Shawna Yang Ryan select award recipients

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We are pleased to announce the inaugural 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 Yu's parents, who are longstanding Taiwanese American community leaders. Their work will be published on TaiwaneseAmerican.org throughout the year.  We received a remarkable number of thoughtful, passionate entries, each of which was carefully reviewed and deliberated…

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Katrina Liu on Asian American Motherhood: “Mina Learns Chinese”

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There are a lot of things that delight me about children’s books despite being a single, childless, young adult. For example, in Katrina Liu’s bilingual book, “I Love Boba,” I’ve found a new favorite bit of joyful dialogue: “但是你是叫它波霸奶茶, 珍珠奶茶, 還是泡泡茶呢? Do you call it boba, pearl tea, or bubble tea?”  That, and a sweetly illustrated girl wisely explaining why fat straws are more appropriate than skinny ones for drinking boba.    View…

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