What I learned from a year of asking, “Am I Taiwanese?”

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By Angela Yu, co-host of "Hearts in Taiwan" podcast I am Taiwanese American, but it’s taken me a long time and a lot of careful thought to say that. I am also Chinese American, an identity I’ve lived with for much longer. This week marks the one-year anniversary of launching a podcast that my cousin Annie Wang and I created to understand the complexities of identity among people whose families come from Taiwan, and we’ve come a long way since then. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1000"]…

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On Clubhouse, ‘臺kanda’: Taiwan’s Wakanda Fantasies

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Are semiconductors Taiwan's vibranium? "Actually," offers one speaker, "it's the Taiwanese people's ethics and heart." Aw. There's a scene in the Marvel franchise where T'challa disrupts the meta-fiction of Wakanda's unremarkable, third-world pretense, grandly revealing their true nature in a gesture of humanitarian aid. That both Wakanda and Taiwan can be categorized as global fictions is sad. But, crucially, there is a difference between hiding and being ignored. [caption id="" align="alignnone"…

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Who Is Arthur Chu? Villain, Hero, or Anti-Hero?

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In 2014, I spoke with filmmaker Yu Gu (顾雨) and her co-director, Scott Drucker, as they were gearing up to follow Arthur Chu for his appearance in the Tournament of Champions on Jeopardy! as a part of their documentary, Who is Arthur Chu?. The film centers on this fellow Taiwanese American, who translated his notoriety from the game show into a being a critical voice on issues of social justice and pop culture. After following the film’s progress, I drove up on a rainy day to speak with Gu…

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