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

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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…

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“Not in Our Name” – Understanding the Jewish Struggle for Palestine from a Taiwanese American Perspective

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="990"] Ten thousand gather in DC with Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now to Demand Gaza Ceasefire Wednesday October 18, 2023 (Photo from Jewish Voice for Peace Twitter)[/caption] “If they hadn’t taken us, where would we have gone?” I've heard this question, once posed by my uncle in Taiwan, echoed countless times by Jewish and Israeli friends over the years. “Where would we have gone?” “Who would have taken us?” In the wake of World…

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Shop Your Community: Mid-Autumn Festival Gift Guide

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  With Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節 coming up next month, we had some fun putting together a gift guide from our community!⁠ 01 / "The Shadow in the Moon" by Christina Matula, illustrated by Pearl Law Two sisters and their grandmother celebrate a popular Chinese holiday with family. Their favorite part? Mooncakes, of course--along with Ah-ma's story of the ancient Chinese tale of Hou Yi, a brave young archer, and his wife, Chang'E. A long, long time ago, Hou Yi rescued the earth…

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How she built this: sophomore Taliyah Huang invents a Taiwanese-English translation tool to bridge language gaps

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Taiwanese American Taliyah Huang is an engineering student who has built a suite of programs, including BobaWay, a web-based Taiwanese translator. We were excited to interview her about the project and her broader passions.  Hi Taliyah! Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?  My name is Taliyah Huang, and I am a sophomore student studying biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. My parents immigrated from Taiwan, but I was born and raised in…

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New on TaiwanPlus: “Kitchen Remix” presents Taiwanese Food… With a Twist

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Two Taiwanese Americans. 20+ recipes. Taiwanese food as never seen before. In a small kitchen in Taipei, Clarissa Wei and Brandon O’Neal set out to tell the tale of Taiwanese dishes. Equipped with extensive knowledge of culinary history, personal memories of each dish and a deep love for the flavors of Taiwan, the two Taiwanese American chefs are giving global audiences a whole new way to understand Taiwanese food. The format of “Kitchen Remix” is fairly simple: Clarissa leads the…

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How Dragon Boat Festival zongzi are my mom’s love language

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For as long as I can remember, the scent of steaming Taiwanese zongzi (or bahtzang, in Taigi) filled my childhood home the weekend ahead of the Dragon Boat Festival day. Before the convenience of Asian grocery chains having a prepared foods section, the memory of my mom sitting on a low plastic stool in the kitchen making zongzi comes to mind. The warmth from the gas stove mixed with boiling pots of zongzi cooking on all four burners signaled to me the start of summer. Zongzi production is…

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Podcasts & Poetry: Cynthia Lin (TW Diaspora) Interviews Shin Yu Pai

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  I’m thrilled Leona connected me with Shin Yu Pai for this written Q&A piece for TaiwaneseAmerican.org centered on her work as an artist, writer, and podcast host. As two podcasters, Shin Yu and I naturally gravitated to talking live after the initial Q&A. I found our conversation to be soul-enriching for those consciously on a healing journey. To listen to the audio interview, check out the podcast episode on TaiwaneseDiaspora.com (available on all major podcast apps). Shin…

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Director’s Picks: Ten Taiwan Films that Imagine Taiwanese America

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Filmmakers in Taiwan have always had their sights on the world and not just the nation. For one, the concept of nation in Taiwan is tricky, especially through decades of colonization, American influence, and rapid globalization. When we think of the globalization of Taiwanese cinema, we typically think of the international film festival success of filmmakers like Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang. But we can also observe that filmmakers in Taiwan have long travelled abroad to…

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The Roots of Disney’s “American Born Chinese”

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Maybe it's our vantage point from TaiwaneseAmerican.org that allows us to appreciate every product and project - especially a mainstream one like this - as a hard-won triumph, as a member of a lineage where people had doors opened for them, and in turn opened doors for others. As much as "representation" is a buzzy and flashy accomplishment, "opportunity" is its accompanying, more profound feat. We get to celebrate friends who have worked hard, who have overcome doubt and rejection, who have…

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Charles Yu, Shawna Yang Ryan, Alvina Ling Select 2023 Creative Writing Prize Recipients

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We are pleased to announce the 2023 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. In its third year, the prize has expanded to include adult writers of all life stages. Their work will be published on TaiwaneseAmerican.org throughout the year. The Prizes are named in honor…

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