Editor and journalist. Bylines at CNN, NBC News, Shondaland, Slate, Romper, Parents, AARP, POPSUGAR, Scary Mommy, Pasadena Magazine, Los Angeles Magazine, and Pacific Citizen.
Channel Your Main Character Energy With the Rom-Com Core Fashion Trend
The diaphanous dress with the soft pink flower motif and ruffled shoulder straps on a thrift store rack called out to Kayla Marie. “Put me on,” the dress seemed to say to the 27-year-old video editor. Paired with a brown shoulder bag and some ruffle ankle socks, the item of clothing could make her feel as confident as Jenna Rink, the teen character magically transformed into an adult portrayed by Jennifer Garner in the 2004 romantic comedy 13 Going on 30, Marie thought.
“I knew it would make ...
A ‘slam dunk’ bill to prevent a repeat of an ugly chapter of American history
February 19, 1942 changed everything for Japanese Americans.
The curves and flourishes of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signature that day on Executive Order 9066 precipitated the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese...
Opinion: Ballroom dancing remains a refuge for Asian immigrants
A dance floor has equalizing power. When the music starts, differences fall away. On the dance floor, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. No one judges where you came from or what language you speak. What m...
Chef Martin Yan Explains Lunar New Year’s Connection to Food
Martin Yan is always in motion.
In the kitchen of his Bay Area home, he flits behind an island table filled with his latest creations: meatballs, rice pudding and lotus sandwiches artfully presented with a tableau of red envelopes and golden oranges.
The chef, who started cooking on TV for an American audience in 1982, just finished livestreaming a free monthly cooking demonstration in partnership with On Lok, a nonprofit center that provides services to older adults in the Bay Area. Th...
Opinion: This most important day for Asian Americans has a meaning everyone can embrace
You could be forgiven if January 22 passes without you noticing anything special about the day. Despite its global significance, most markers of civic society in the US — banks, schools, businesses, and governmen...
Clutter Can Be Good for Your Mental Health
When Michelle Delabrer moved into her house, she filled the space with all the things she loved: a framed photo of the Weasley family from the Harry Potter films, an array of Japanese rice ball tchotchkes, and manatees. Lots and lots of manatee trinkets. “They’re all reminders,” says the graphic designer, “of happy things.”
During the bleak early days of the pandemic, surr...
Patsy Mink and the Revolutionary Role of Motherhood
Picture this: A young woman pregnant with her first child is prescribed vitamins by her doctor. She faithfully swallows the round white pills to nourish herself and the li...
Why the overabundance of the gift-giving season causes me discomfort
When bedroom doors fly open on Christmas morning, my kids drink in a vision of a picture-perfect Christmas — an explosion of bright colors and shiny coils of ribbons in meticulously wrapped presents. Family members amble through the front door with more gifts, so the kids form a gift-opening assembly line that starts from youngest to oldest. For hours, there is a fervent tearing of paper, a hoisting of new objects in the air, shouts of glee and the creation of piles and piles of stuff.
It’s t...
Cluttercore Is the Trend Many Parents Need Right Now
Think you should get rid of all the stuff in your home? The trending aesthetic of cluttercore says parents can celebrate the chaos instead.
In Roxy Strickland's living room, the décor is stratified: home accessories that tickle the grown-ups' fancy live up top, and kids' stuff is lower to the ground. Adult visitors can lock eyes uneasily with a Westworld character who, in a framed poster, has flesh falling away from its robotic skeleton. Pinhead, the prickly-faced character from the Hellraise...
Not Everyone Has Adult Teeth
When my husband and I learned that we’d unwittingly passed on the genetic condition to our son, we realized that it would be up to us to cover the costs of fixing it.
We learned something was wrong from a routine X-ray image. There were my son’s baby teeth and gums. And then, below, there should have been a row of “tooth buds,” the dentist explained. The term made me think of plant sprouts, but tooth buds look like, well, teeth. Or at least they’re supposed to.
For my son, th...
A Radically Reimagined Historic Memorial in Little Tokyo
A living memorial to the past and present honoring all who were incarcerated in the U.S. during WWII is now at L.A.’s Japanese American National Museum
For Bill Fujioka, a first-of-its-kind book that lists every person of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during World War II reads like a personal family history book.
Among the 125,284 names listed in the unassuming-looking book are those of his father, Willie Fujioka, a U.S. veteran, his grandfather Fred Fujioka, and other family members. With o...
Meet the Moms Who Are Fighting Anti-Asian Hate
As anti-Asian hate rages across the nation, moms are taking a stand. But the fight isn't new.
Lily Chin relived the trauma of her son's gruesome death on national television for a reason. Wearing a dark blazer and a pink and white ruffled blouse, she was the epitome of maternal grief on The Phil Donahue Show. Through sobs, she said the two white men who beat her son with a baseball bat killed him "like an animal." In 1983, Vincent Chin's mother didn't have the internet or social media to crow...
The Best Thing About The Pandemic Is The End Of Play Dates
Maskot, Westend61/Getty Images
In a store check-out line, friendship can blossom quickly. Accompanied by the rhythmic beeping of the scanners, my son's eyes lock on his new best buddy: the kid standing behind us in line. They talk in hushed tones, huddled together like the world around them doesn’t exist.
Because I live in a suburban Los Angeles neighborhood where the number of new moms per capita is low, I recognize the hunger for connection. It starts with a stranger’s delighted sizing up o...
At The Mom 2.0 Summit, Reconnecting & Refocusing Took Center Stage
Mom 2.0
“We are not the same people,” said Laura Mayes to a ballroom full of moms last month. She was addressing an audience who’d pivoted again and again through a pandemic and up to the moment we find ourselves in now: a limbo between almost-but-not normalcy and a still ongoing pandemic. Mayes, an Emmy-winning writer and co-founder of Mom 2.0, was welcoming the crowd to the start of the organization’s 3-day summit in Los Angeles. For the first time since 2019, the Mom 2.0 community had come...
Love Letters to Our Cousin Vincent Chin
FeaturesHomepage FeatureIn-Depth
Vincent Chin has been with author Paula Yoo for over half of her life. (Photo: Jarod Lew)
Stories are the shape of our existence. On the 40th Anniversary of his death, three AAPI artists and storytellers carry on Chin’s legacy.
By Lynda Lin Grigsby, Contributor
A love letter is a blank canvas on which emotions are painted. For his latest commissioned piece, a portrait to commemorate the legacy of Vincent Chin, the artist Anthony Lee received little direction.
...