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Welcome | Issue 01

Pary Chuong

Welcome | Issue 01 As a little girl, I remember listening to the stories my mother would tell about how our family survived the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I would illustrate each story in my mind as if I were there experiencing it firsthand alongside her. Some stories were light and funny and others were […]

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Please Understand Me

THAİLAN WHEN

Please Understand Me Actualization Last Trip Mother and Child Swimming Pastels When I’ve Always Known You Cover Your Eyes For more on the work of artist, Thailan When, visit thailanwhen.com and her Etsy shop. THAİLAN WHEN is a Vietnamese-Chinese American illustrator, painter, and collage artist. She was born in a refugee camp in Songkhla, Thailand […]

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Untitled (Mey)

Cece Carpio

CECE CARPIO tell stories of immigration, ancestry, resistance, and resilience using acrylic, ink, aerosol and installations. She documents evolving traditions through combining folkloric forms, bold portraits and natural elements with urban art techniques. Her work is influenced by people she have met and places she’ve been. Cece paints everyday people who have been invincible in […]

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A Love Letter to Yie Chen

Margaretta Lin

A Love Letter to Yie Chen Part I Jade Harmony lost face on her wedding day She didn’t know the Eiyan making ritual  She had spoilt her girlhood dreaming of becoming a pianist   Mother-hood, daughter-in-law-hood, she knew were to be feared Until she met a man with monkey ears  And eyes that spoke of yearning and determination  She forgot her […]

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A Mother’s Day Letter to My Mama

Ananya Li Bhatia-Lin

A Mother’s Day Letter to My Mama Mama, When you chose to bring me into the world, you shifted your life to accommodate me, my needs and whims, my best interests. Sacrifice is a trite word to describe this change; I have come to understand it as a seismic shift that reoriented your entire direction. […]

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If I could release you

Fiona Tang

If I could release you 死女包It cuts deepLike slitting wounds with shards of glassSpoiled brat My English words—thoughts don’t translateI scramble for shared meaningIt only fuels you further, livid, irateI try again but they fly past youShrill, grating scoldingScowl, simmering resentmentYour porcelain bowl hits the concrete, shatteringYour happinessAnd then mine You warn me of the […]

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Frog and Squirrel and Possum

Yoko Oji Kikuchi and Helen Shizuko Oji

Frog and Squirrel and Possum Yoko Oji Kikuchi (daughter) and Helen Shizuko Oji (mother) FROG Mom says Grandma Mitzi is a frog in the painting because when she was alive she collected frog things. Little ones, made of ceramic or wood or whatever else people make frogs out of.  When I proposed the idea for […]

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the poem

learkana chong

the poem The poem is in the emotional abuse.No, the poem is in the antidepressants.Or hidden somewhere in that faraway gazeshe would put on by the sliding glass door.Or in the Khmer newspaper she would readwith dollar store glasses on. Actually, the poem is in her rotting teeth.No, the poem is in her X-rays.It’s lurking […]

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transformation

learkana chong

transformation I think about the long bridge of women spanning before me: Women who bit their tongues and broke their backs for men Women who toiled under the hot sun,their hands finding home in soil Women who birthed the banes of their existencewith gritted teeth taken for smiles Women who took root and sunk into […]

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Generations

Lailan Sandra Huen

Generations Lailan Sandra Huen | llustrations by Kathy Liang To Generate:  to bring into existence to originate by a vital, chemical, or physical process to be the cause of a situation, action, or state of mind Generation: a type or class of objects usually developed from an earlier type a body of living beings constituting […]

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