“Where Every Ghost Has a Name”: Kim Liao in conversation with Cosette Wu

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After hearing Kim Liao speak at the 2024 North American Taiwan Studies Association Conference welcoming plenary session, I found myself eagerly anticipating the September release of her book, Where Every Ghost Has a Name: A Memoir of Taiwanese Independence. In 2010, Kim traveled to Taiwan on a Fulbright, seeking to uncover the story of her grandfather, Thomas Liao (Liao Wen-yi), a prominent leader of the Taiwanese independence movement. Her research led to conversations with family near and far…

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Taiwanese Homecoming: Meet Artist Felicia Liang

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We may try, but it’s not often our travel scrapbooks look as vivid as artist Felicia Liang’s. Liang’s art often depicts the cuisine, still life, and everyday objects of the Asian American experience. In 2022, as she prepared for a trip to Taiwan, she grabbed a set of color pencils, her preferred medium. There, she would sketch a range of foods and scenes she encountered during her three-month stay: scenes of Taiwanese breakfast, cafe eats, local sweets, and colorful dumplings. The contents…

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A True Family Business: Jessica Wang of Gu Grocery in conversation with Tiffany Ran

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I thought I first met Jessica Wang and her mother, who lovingly goes by the name Mama Peggy, at the LA River Farmers Market a few years ago. But looking back in my shoebox of old photos from high school, I dug out a picture of my friends enjoying a park picnic and there she was. My friend had asked to bring along a family friend that day. We'd all enjoyed a day at the park and I hadn’t seen her since. That is, until the day at the LA River Farmers Market so many years later, when we started chatting…

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On Identity, Writing, and Preserving Heritage: Erica Lee Schlaikjer (“Wild Greens, Beautiful Girl”) in conversation with Crystal Z. Lee

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1296"] Art by Cinyee Chiu. Published by Sleeping Bear Press.[/caption] As a parent, I'm perpetually on the lookout for children’s books about Taiwan or meaningful reads written by fellow Taiwanese American authors. Wild Greens, Beautiful Girl, is a soon-to-be released picture book that has been on my radar ever since I first heard of this award-winning story about an aboriginal Amis girl in Taiwan. My daughters and I were thrilled to receive an advanced…

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“Half a World Apart”: Grace Loh Prasad (The Translator’s Daughter) in conversation with Jami Nakamura Lin

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I’ve had the pleasure of following Grace Loh Prasad’s writing for years, after we met in a Facebook group for writers. (We finally met in person at AWP in 2021, at a gathering of Taiwanese American writers, and have met up at every AWP since!) After getting to see her journey from afar—and getting to read excerpts of her memoir in different literary journals—I was so delighted to be able to read The Translator’s Daughter (Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books) in full this year.  In…

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Real You Mandarin: Angela Lin on Empowering American-born Mandarin Speakers to have Adult Conversations

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Real You Mandarin is an online language course created by Taiwanese American and Taiwanese co-founders Angela Lin and Jane Liu. Angela is Taiwanese American, with extensive language learning experience across multiple languages and learning techniques. As creator and co-host of the But Where Are You Really From? Podcast, she has spent years discussing the unique cultural and identity challenges faced by Asian Americans, and brings that exploration as inspiration for this course. Jane, a…

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Author Q&A: Kara H.L. Chen and “Love & Resistance,” “Asking for a Friend”

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We're so honored to share this interview between two of our literary champions. Tiffany is a Taiwanese American book blogger and co-founder of Subtle Asian Book Club (SABC), an international book club with 15,000+ members dedicated to amplifying Asian storytellers. She is a passionate advocate for the accessibility and readership of Asian American literature and uses her platform to combat anti-AAPI hate and support the flourishing of Asian communities worldwide. We knew she would facilitate an astute…

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Author Q&A: Yi Shun Lai and “A Suffragist’s Guide to the Antarctic”

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I was so pleased to read an advance copy of Yi Shun Lai's forthcoming A SUFFRAGIST'S GUIDE TO THE ANTARCTIC, a young adult novel constructed as the diary entries of Clara Ketterling-Dunbar, who has somehow maneuvered her way into an otherwise all-male Antarctic expedition. None of the other crew members know the full truth about Clara: that she is just eighteen and American, or that she'd been an outspoken suffragist with the Women's Social & Political Union. Still, they are wary of her,…

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Forms of Expression: An Interview with Artist Jocelyn Tsaih

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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…

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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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