Featured Stories

Fantuan Discourse

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I would not consider myself an aggressive person, but I tend to find myself getting into petty arguments with my friends. One recent argument occurred right after a dinner in which I was introducing my new boyfriend to my friends Phillip and Lily.[1] It began innocently enough: we had dinner at a nice Turkish restaurant, then retreated to Phillip’s apartment for dessert and tea. During the conversation, it came to light that we are all of Taiwanese descent, which naturally led to a discussion…

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Wish-Granting and Magic-Making in “When You Wish Upon a Lantern”

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In Gloria Chao’s “When You Wish Upon a Lantern,” wishes don’t magically come true. They are received with kindness, guided, and often painstakingly maneuvered “into the light.”  Born and raised in Chicago’s Chinatown, Liya Huang and Kai Jiang are childhood best friends whose families harbor a mutual dislike not unlike the Montagues and Capulets - if the Montagues and Capulets were passive-aggressive and dueled with their children instead of weapons. Still, Liya and Kai share…

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Between My Grandfather, Taiwan, and Me

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I had just turned eleven years old when my gonggong passed away. I never got to know him very well; my memories of him are pieced together from summer trips to the East Coast, when we visited my mother’s side of the family. But between his deteriorating health and my distraction of getting to play Wii with my cousins, my gonggong and I did not spend much time together. After his death, his transformation into an unknown, distant figure in my life felt inevitable. [caption id="" align="aligncenter"…

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Why I Love “Everything Everywhere All At Once”

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  From the point of view of a Taiwanese American eighteen year old aspiring filmmaker I’ve been following “Everything Everywhere All At Once” since the first trailer released over a year ago. The trailer told me nothing about the plot of the movie, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it would be the most epic movie I had ever seen. There was a combination of factors that intrigued me: the sci-fi/Asian American immigrant mother-daughter hybrid story, the mysteriousness of the trailer,…

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“The Jennie Show” on TaiwanPlus: Animated First-Hand Telling of “Third Culture” Experiences in Taiwan

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Enjoying the best of both worlds or finding comfort in a “third culture”? A stranger in a strange land or a homecoming full of quirks and wonders? Learning about a foreign yet familiar culture or rediscovering one’s own identity? These are some of the questions Jennie explores in her return to Taiwan as experienced through her Taiwanese American lens – via Colorado, to be exact. “The Jennie Show”, a short-form animation recently released on the fast-growing global streaming platform…

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Book Review: Elaine Hsieh Chou’s “Disorientation”

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In 2015, poet Michael Derrick Hudson submitted his poem “The Bees” to various journals and magazines in hopes of being published. After the poem was passed over nearly forty times, Hudson decided to change his strategy. Only nine submissions later, “The Bees” was featured in that year’s edition of “The Best American Poetry” — but under the name Yi-Fen Chou. Hudson, a white man, had used a Chinese name as a pseudonym as a way to garner attention for his work.  In her debut…

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How writing novels helped me learn more about what it means to be Taiwanese American

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I’ve had a complicated relationship with my Taiwanese background for most of my life. My parents immigrated in their twenties, and I was born in the US but raised in a very traditional, Mandarin-speaking home. Growing up, I felt like I had two sides to me: an American skin I’d wear at school, which felt most like me, and a Taiwanese one I’d force on at home. My friends didn’t understand me—even my Taiwanese American friends, because my family was still keeping traditions from the 50s…

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This is why you must read “THIS IS NOT MY HOME”

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An Interview with Best Friends Eugenia Yoh and Vivienne Chang, and a Review of Their Debut Picture Book This is a totally unbiased review of the greatest debut picture book I’ve ever read. The first time I read This Is Not My Home was, indeed, not at my home—rather, it was at a publishing house. For context, this publishing house was supposed to be a new home for not only myself, but also Eugenia, for we were both newish hires at the time. At the time, the publishing house still felt…

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Cōng yóu Bǐng: A Catalyst for Taiwanese Self-Identity

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Oil in the worn iron skillet bubbles a caramel hue with burnt flaky dough dotting the bottom like poppy seeds. Laying the newly formed Cōng yóu Bǐng in the pan, the oil splatters and the scent of fried dough and sharp tang of scallions perfume the kitchen. As my hands shape each pancake, I reflect on how food has shaped me, allowing me to connect with my ethnic roots and construct my identity.  [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="900"] The author’s Cōng yóu Bǐng prepared in…

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Coming of Age with Grace Lin’s “Year of the Dog”

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“So, what are you?”  Since childhood, I've had a go-to response: “I’m fifty-percent Taiwanese, twenty-five percent Mexican, and twenty-five percent German.” I was proud to present myself as a unique combination of races and ethnicities, to be “othered” from any and all groups; but this statistical proclamation showed that I only understood myself as a pie chart in which I was part of a whole. I wasn’t allowed full access into any of these identities. I grew tired trying to…

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