Featured Stories

Taiwanese American Book Fair: TaiwaneseAmerican.org at the 2025 Taiwanese American Cultural Festival

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This past weekend, we were so pleased to gather nearly a dozen local Taiwanese American authors and illustrators for our largest-yet "Taiwanese American Book Fair" at the 2025 Taiwanese American Cultural Festival in San Francisco's Union Square, hosted by TAP-SF. This year, we partnered with On Waverly, a new and already-beloved Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) centered shop and creative space located in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown. Founded in 2023 by sisters Cynthia and Jennifer…

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A Tradition of Gathering: Taiwanese American Writers at AWP 2025

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[gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="23842,23843"] For the third year in a row, TaiwaneseAmerican.org founder Ho Chie Tsai and editor-in-chief Leona Chen hosted a Taiwanese American Writers’ Dinner during the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference (AWP). This time, we gathered at Pine & Crane DTLA, and immediately began chatting —first in the queue, then at a long table where we rotated seats to ensure new connections. These conversations could happen anywhere,…

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Good to Eat Owners Look Back (and Ahead) at Eight Years of Sharing Taiwanese Cuisine

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Good to Eat Chef Tony Tung and General Manager Angie Lin have been at the restaurant game for a while. The wife-wife team opened Good to Eat almost eight years ago after operating as a regular pop-up for four years. Before then, they had slowly developed recipes and passionately shared the nuances of Taiwanese cuisine through their word-of-mouth supper clubs. Together, Lin and Tung, without prior food industry experience worked diligently toward strengthening the public’s understanding of Taiwanese…

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Umbilical Cord: Creative Nonfiction by brenda Lin

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Before my mother’s wedding day, my grandmother gifted her the umbilical cord that had dried up and fallen off her newborn belly, which Ama had carefully saved all those years. This is a common practice in Taiwanese families because Taiwanese people love homonyms and umbilicus, which is the navel, is pronounced like the word for wealth (臍/財) in Taiwanese, so that when one’s umbilical cord is returned, it is transformed into an ouroboros gift of good wishes. My mother showed hers to me when…

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2024 Taiwanese American Gift Guide: Shop your community!

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By popular demand, we're bringing back our annual gift guide, highlighting Taiwanese American small businesses, brands, and creators. This year, our nomination form included space for these folks to share any community affiliations (such as with the Taiwanese American Foundation summer conference of Taiwanese American Professionals chapters), and it warms our hearts to see all the connective networks throughout! See our past gift guides here. We're also so proud of the flourishing Taiwanese American…

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“Lin”: A Short Story by Triona Tsai

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Lin was tired of running.  When her family was ripped from her 15 year old world, Lin ran. She ran to escape the scathing voices in her head. Ran to escape the hunger for a warm embrace. 1 year, 6 months, and 8 days later, Lin ran alone. As the youngest of three, Lin had never expected to be the last one. Her brother, Jin, was crafted from the watery depths, his disposition as unruly and free as the tormented sea. Waterfalls of water twisted and curled like an obedient beast at the flick…

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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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Koi Fish: A TAF Story by Brady Nichols

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Editor’s Note: The Taiwanese American Foundation’s summer conference has been running for over four decades, cultivating among 3+ generations its vision “for people of Taiwanese heritage to make a profound impact on humankind in unique and compassionate ways.” TAF is also the “ancestral home” of TaiwaneseAmerican.org; many of our board of directors, staff, and longtime volunteers (including our founder, Ho Chie Tsai, and the creator of the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing…

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Beyond Boba: Grunge Rock, Taiwanese Democracy, and the Model Minority Myth—in A Kid’s Book

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  The idea for my first novel for kids, It’s Boba Time for Pearl Li!, came pretty easily. Anti-Asian and Asian American hate had surged in the early days of the pandemic, with its hateful perpetrators demanding that many of us who have lived in the US our entire lives “go home.” To resist their cruelty, I decided to create a sweet, happy, joyful book that showcased a normal, everyday, highly relatable Taiwanese American kid— one who was super proud of her heritage. And what immensely…

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