Conversational Ruptures: Decolonizing Taste Buds with @papayapetite
Beyond recipes, Lao American creator @papayapetite’s content invites her audience to reflect on food history, cultural erasure, and the way colonialism has shaped not only the diets of marginalized communities but also their broader narratives around food and identity.
vienna chang | dec 21, 2024
On the Apolitical Assault of the MFA’s ‘Hallyu!’ Exhibit
The transnational “Hallyu!” exhibit is not a celebration of South Korean history and culture, but instead reinforces the illusion of postcoloniality and the logic of Western modernity.
jesica bak | MAY 08, 2024
Western Narratives, Sinophobia, and the Chinese Identity
What does it mean to internalize a prejudice against Chinese Americans that we must distinguish from the conflated narrative of discrimination against Asian Americans writ large?
jason tung | may 02, 2024
Conversational Ruptures: The New Yorker’s Victor Guan on Imbuing Culture in Graphic Design
Victor Guan, assistant art director at The New Yorker, discusses imbuing Chinese American lifestyles, traditions, and meanings into his design practice, and the art of documenting memory.
enzo nguyen | apr 19, 2024
Southeast Asians and Minding the Gap in ‘Asian America’
For Hmong and Lao Americans, the perceived proximity to both whiteness and East Asian domination in the conflated term of “Asian American” is always lost. How can we reconcile this fissure?
Vienna Chang | mar 28, 2024
Crying in the Bookstore: The Asian Face of the Trauma Genre
The publishing industry’s demand for marketable narratives of trauma within Asian and Asian American literature is not only redundant, but depoliticizes Asian American identities to one of victimhood.
SANDRA LI | mar 19, 2024
Kung Fu Hustle: Renting Old Hong Kong DVDs and Rewinding Through my Cantonese Heritage
Cantonese culture, history, and language cannot be captured under the American catch-all of “Chinese”—what emerges when you look to old Hong Kong rental DVDs from the library to explore it?
thomas chan | mar 14, 2024
A Match Made in Heaven?: ‘Past Lives,’ Asian Women, and White Men
The racialized love game between the Asian woman and the white guy—what can Celine Song’s critically-acclaimed “Past Lives” teach us about immigration and mourning an intimacy untouched by whiteness?
karissa korman | feb 27, 2024
illume magazine 