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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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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SPARK Accel: A Virtual Accelerator for Taiwanese American Entrepreneurs

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Inspire. Educate. Accelerate. SPARK Accel is a personalized virtual accelerator designed to help Taiwanese American entrepreneurs grow as leaders and scale their businesses. Built by a team of experienced tech professionals across the U.S., the program will give entrepreneurs the opportunity to learn from successful TA founders and business leaders, join a supportive members-only network, and win up to $15,000 with no strings attached. Steven Chen, one of SPARK Accel's co-founders, is Head…

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Meet Laura and Olivia, Co-founders of Project EMplify

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Photos provided by Olivia Chen Project EMplify, co-founded by Taiwanese Americans Laura Huang and Olivia Chen, is a global non-profit initiative dedicated to addressing inequality and disadvantage through personal empowerment. Their programming includes a book matching program, mentoring sessions, and workshops to help underserved communities discover how they can find and create their edge, as outlined in Huang’s debut book, EDGE: Turning Adversity into Advantage. Their goal is to reach…

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Taiwan’s Got It! A Talent Competition for All

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Taiwanese identity is contested, challenged, and complicated for a variety of reasons. Its ongoing interrogation, though, presents a ripe opportunity to further challenge our own assumptions about belonging and personal choice. The people of Taiwan are not simply the indigenous, benshengren, or waishengren.  They include expats, more recent migrants, foreign exchange students, and more. And, interestingly, the concept of Taiwanese identity has become less tethered to race and ethnicity, and more…

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