Finding a Second Jia (Home)

by | Aug 31, 2024

So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed                        床前明月光 chuáng qián míng yuè guāng Could there have been a frost already                                       疑是地上霜 yí shì dì shàng shuāng Lifting my head to look / I found that it was moonlight           ...

Hearing Home Through a Podcast of Asian American Tales

by | Aug 31, 2024

As folklorists and colleagues working inside and beyond academia, we are dedicated to building the field of Asian American folklore. In late 2021, we launched “Yellow and Brown Tales: Asian American Folklife Today,” a podcast that highlights the...

I didn’t write this for you!

by | Aug 30, 2024

Excerpt from Eddie Vega’s poem, “I didn’t write this poem for you,” (2019, 76), illustrated by Lisa Rathje.   In 2023, the Pew Research Center published information about how Latinas/os/es in the United States view Spanish language in their lives.1 The study...

From the Printed Page to the Concert Stage

by | Aug 30, 2024

Following a 2019 performance in Sweden, the singer and musician Maja Heurling was approached by an audience member and recent migrant. “This is the first time I’ve heard a Swede telling the story that I carry inside,” they told her (Heurling 2022). The Swede who...

The Dzaleka Art Project

by | Aug 30, 2024

The Dzaleka Art Project is a collaboration between youth living in the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi, undergraduate and graduate students at George Mason University (GMU), and me, a GMU Professor of Folklore and English. Six youth who live in the camp documented arts...