Leaving the United States Made Me Feel More Taiwanese American

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“But where are you really from?”  That’s the age-old question so many of us Asian-Americans have received throughout our lives living in the U.S. And while many have various objections to the principle of the question, for me, the real reason that question used to get under my skin was because it was really an identity question: “Which world do you belong to?”  And the answer to that wasn’t nearly as clear as an origin story. This identity crisis is something I’ve struggled…

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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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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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