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Asian American Creative Arts In Action

riksha

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What We Feed Ourselves

During quarantine, many of us are eating at home much more often than before. Whether this means physically eating in our home versus prepping food to take to work, or cooking for ourselves instead of going out to eat, our home-food-scape has changed drastically. In quarantine, I have struggled to put care and love into feeding myself the way that comes easily to me when feeding or sharing food with others. I hope that, while in the chaos of a global pandemic, we can treasure the foods that make us feel safe and cared for, and give ourselves a little bit of love in the ways we feed ourselves.
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Grandma’s House

As we continue to shelter-in-place, I would spend days and hours reflecting and mourning for a world that may never come back. I would create sketches of both my homeland and Chicago to release stress as I try to find a new “normal.” I think of being confined to our home, wondering how families in other nations are coping, losing business as supplies and customers dwindle, and a sense of loneliness that comes with isolation. Through it all, I still hope and pray that at the end of this, we would become better, to not take for granted all that we had, and to heal.
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True Postcards from Paradise: An Interview with Hannah Ii-Epstein Exploring Her Play, Pakalolo Sweet, & Life in the Diaspora

Even today when people think of Hawai’i, white sand beaches, lush mountains and friendly, Aloha-spirited people easily come to mind. The vision of Hawai’i as a paradise free from the stressors of mainland life is firmly planted in the American psyche thanks to decades of commodified tourism. If people think of native Hawaiians at all, it is likely the image of the coconut bra and lei-wearing hula girl, swinging her hips and smiling for gleeful tourists. Most know very little about the complex history and culture of Hawai’i or what life is like for locals and Native Hawaiians today.
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Words to Live By

by Kim Fountain

My mother’s favorite question is, “They pay you to talk?” In my sweet 80-year old mother’s tone there are also two comments. One being, “So stupid that this is a job” and the other, “Wow, my child is smart”, but not smart in the sense of what it is I actually say, but in that by talking, I make money.

My mom left school at age twelve to work 15 hour days on her feet. She has never been to a meeting in her life and has never touched a computer beyond dusting it so, for her, my desk job and its meeting after meeting schedule is ridiculous because I can’t point to a final product. I do add in, that now and again, I need to say something of use or I don’t get asked back. By then though, she is off on another subject.

I know that there is not as much difference between us as she might think. It is after all, because of her that I figured out that words, used to trouble and even sometimes rupture power, would eventually carry me toward a sense of purpose.

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Growing Up Shiseido: Chain Stores, Beauty Magazines, and Whitening Cream

by Jane Hseu

My grandfather founded the Taiwanese branch of Shiseido, the high-end Japanese cosmetics company. The family story, told to me by his daughter, my mother, is that during WWII, while Taiwan was under Japanese colonization, my grandfather went to Japan to work, leaving his young wife to take care of their young daughter and his aged parents in the hardships of the Taiwanese countryside. For my grandmother, my mother said, life was bitter. After working at Shiseido in Japan, my grandfather founded Shiseido in Taiwan, Shiseido’s first overseas venture, and became a rich man. There were tens of millions of Taiwanese women to whom he could sell make-up and skin products.

photo credit: Chao-Yan on Upsplash
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