On Family, Love, and Creating: Jocelyn Chung & Julia Kuo (When Love is More Than Words) in conversation with Jasmine Fang

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Jasmine: Hi Jocelyn and Julia! Congratulations Jocelyn on your debut picture book, and thank you both for creating WHEN LOVE IS MORE THAN WORDS. I was immediately intrigued by the title and thrilled to see this Taiwanese American pairing. What a beautiful story that will resonate deeply with young readers. This book is a mirror for me, as I felt transported back to my Taiwanese childhood.  I love that you’ve captured the magic of intergenerational love in WHEN LOVE IS MORE THAN WORDS. What…

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On playfulness, anger, mother-daughter relationships, and all the white space in between: Bo Lu (Bao’s Doll) in conversation with Mikaela Luke

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Bao’s Doll is one of those books that makes you gasp when you first flip through it and stays with you in your mind long after.  Filled with soft hues of blue, red, and purple, the book follows a young girl, Bao, who covets a certain kind of relationship with her Mama, one that she sees between her classmates and their mothers. She also covets a birthday party with cakes and balloons and the blond-haired All-American Artist Amanda doll, much like her friend’s—and she believes that there…

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“To be left ignorant about Asian American history is to erase who we are as a people”: Ellie Yang Camp’s “Louder Than the Lies”

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Taiwanese American author Ellie Yang Camp has been a high school history teacher, an artist, and an anti-racist educator. Now she’s taking on another task, authoring Louder Than the Lies: Asian American Identity, Solidarity, and Self-Love. In this book she unpacks the Asian American identity by drawing on personal experiences, stories from her friends, and the history of Asians in America. She also tackles the topic of white supremacy, capitalism, and racial solidarity.   This is not a…

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How bilingual author & pediatric music therapist Isabelle Engler is raising the next generation of Taiwanese Americans

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“Raising the Next Generation” aims to feature and connect stories of Taiwanese American parenthood, caretaking, and community-building across generations. We want to hear from our community on the unique challenges they navigate, the resources and tools they can share with each other, and the triumphs they want to celebrate with us all. We want to showcase and serve how Taiwanese American families are increasingly complex and diverse. They may include transcontinental relationships, intercultural…

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“Baking is working, right?”: Meet Baker Cat Cheng, from Netflix’s “Blue Ribbon Baking Championship”

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Baker Cat Cheng of Cat’s Bakes on Discovering a Her New Talent and Chasing the Blue Ribbon Cat Cheng became a music teacher straight out of college, but found herself struggling to continue down that path despite devoting much of her life to the craft. When COVID hit, she, like many, took to baking as a hobby and a distraction. But her skills quickly flourished and she saw the potential for baking to become a small business. Within a few short years, she launched Cat’s Bakes, a home baking business,…

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“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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 Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food

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Introduction by Cathy Erway for TaiwaneseAmerican.org You can always tell the books that have been enjoyed the most by how damaged they are. Those books have been on adventures: Maybe you took them to the beach and clogged up their spines with sand. Maybe you rounded their edges from banging them around in your tote bag for weeks.  In the case of Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book Volume I, a copy of which sits in my parents’ bookshelf, the wear and tear is evident. A constant sight for as long…

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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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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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