In 2017 I reconnected with a childhood friend I hadn’t corresponded with regularly since the early 2000s, when we delighted in sending each other long-winded, subject-jumping letters and unspeakably nerdy drawings (we loved Lord of the Rings before it was cool, okay).
Something we shared as children besides our general lack of coolness (which I say with fondness) was our Taiwanese heritage, and in our young adult years we’ve commiserated on social and political issues that, as kids, we didn’t realize were pushing and pulling on our lives in ways out of our control. The way we processed the anxieties and challenges of growing up Taiwanese American was to, well, have conversations.
We’re still all about conversations, all about productive exchanges.
Chrysanthemum, a print anthology of literature and artwork, was partly a result of that conversation orientation. In affiliation with the nonprofit TaiwaneseAmerican.org, it shares young creatives’ perspectives on the currently not-so-widely-visible Taiwanese diasporic experience.