Self Evident: Asian America's Stories

America! The land of opportunity! And also, for so many, the ambiguous loss of immigration and uprooting a life and a history comes with a complex …

The LahPai family’s arrival to Virginia from Myanmar was highly anticipated: the local resettlement agency prepped their home; the local religious community was ready to provide support; the family’s U.S connection …

Today, we're sharing some work by our friends at Immigrantly, a weekly podcast that features deeply personal conversations about race, identity, and the immigrant experience. This episode features a conversation between …

Please take our listener survey to tell us what you think of Before Me! The survey is anonymous, takes 5 minutes, and is incredibly important for helping us take our next steps as an independent studio for stories by …

Just before I gave birth to my daughter Acacia, I turned 36. And on my birthday my mom sent me a birthday card that was full of heartfelt words — …

At the moment my mom steps onto a small fishing boat off the coast of Cambodia, headed for a refugee camp in Thailand under cover of night, she becomes the head of our family. It takes her less than a year to make it …

Reunited with my cousin Lynn, my mom becomes a gold dealer to support her growing family — and realizes that the charmed childhood she had in …

As the genocidal regime of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge takes hold of Cambodia, my mom and dad run for their lives — separated from my cousin, Lynn, …

When I became a parent, my mom flew across the country to help me take care of my firstborn child. And opened up to share a story I’d never fully …

Lisa Phu grew up telling a story about how her family left Cambodia as refugees, to start a new life in the United States — but for the longest time, she’d never heard this story firsthand, from her mom, Lan.

After Lisa …

When you get into a taxi, you usually know where you’re coming from, where you’re going, and what you’ll do when you get there. But what about your taxi driver – someone whose work is in constant motion, moving from …

When Augustine Tang’s father passed away, Augustine decided to inherit his taxi medallion – the license that had allowed his father to drive a yellow taxi cab in New York City for decades. But the medallion came with a …

Amidst the ongoing crush of anti-Asian violence in America, Producer James turns to a personal source of restoration: ska music (yes, that ska music).

The Covid-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of caregiving work — and the ways that this work is overlooked, under-resourced, or placed as a burden on families without a sense of fairness or compassion. In this …

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- Cathy and the team

For so many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Spam is a beloved classic food, showing up in everything from musubi to fried rice. But behind …

Community Producer Rochelle Kwan (a.k.a. YiuYiu in her DJ life) gathers the DJs who joined her in curating our first annual mixtape — to chat about how we can use music to reconnect our diaspora communities, across …

Community Producer Rochelle Kwan (a.k.a. YiuYiu) invites three of her favorite DJs to curate our first annual mixtape — and chat with them about how we can use music to reconnect our diaspora communities, across …

Daphne Chen always held a special place in her heart for the Taiwanese girl group S.H.E. Growing up in Ohio, she’d listen to their greatest hits before falling asleep, clinging to their pop songs as one of her only …

This Fall many public primary schools in the U.S. switched back to in-person learning. But that can mean very different things for students, …

This is the second part of a two-part story. If you haven’t heard part one, “Don’t Eat Nazi Shit Melons,” you can listen to it here.

After the arrest of Indiana University Professor Cara Caddoo, the Mayor of Bloomington …

In the summer of 2019, a public fight unfurled in Bloomington, Indiana — over accusations that Sarah Dye and Douglas Mackey, who sold produce at the …

Self Evident's third season starts this month. Subscribe where you get podcasts, and help spread the word to your family and friends! 

During the current refugee crisis in Afghanistan, we’ve seen Asian Americans working to resettle Afghan refugees and help them build new lives. …

We’re presenting an episode from Shoes Off, a podcast about Asian Australian culture hosted by Jay Ooi. In conversation with performers and scholars, …

This week, we’re playing an episode from Making Contact. Making Contact produces media that analyses critical issues and showcases grassroots …

We’re playing an episode from an exciting new podcast by our friends at APIENC, an organization that builds transgender, non-binary, and queer power for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the Bay Area (you …

We're sharing the story “When Your Country Doesn’t Trust You” from the podcast WorldAffairs.In the past year, reports of anti-Asian hate crimes have spiked across the country. A lot of this is attributed to anti-Asian …

Julianne Sato-Parker first heard the phrase, “Shikata ga nai” while watching a video series of interviews with Japanese Americans and Japanese …

We’re sharing this story from one of our favorite podcasts, See Something Say Something, by Ahmed Ali Akbar.

Pakistani-American communities in the U.S. rely on dealers on WhatsApp to gain access to their most coveted …

The phrase “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is buzz-word-ier than ever, but what does it really take to empower workers and reduce racialized harm in the places where we spend so many of our waking hours? And when is …

The impact of storytelling is often portrayed as a story changing the life of the person consuming it — and changing the world by reaching as many people as possible. But what about the person who offers their story to …

We often take for granted that “seeing people who look like us” — especially in mass media — means progress towards racial justice. But what forms of representation do we see making an impact? And who is that impact for?

Why do Asian Americans have such deep relationships with fruit?

Cathy goes on a quest to find the answers — starting with her friendly neighborhood fruit vendor, Cece, then spending time with friends and listeners in …

When producer Erica Mu moved back to her hometown in 2014, she said goodbye to a past life without any idea what exactly her new life should look …

What happens when you come to America to marry the person you thought would take care of you, only to find yourself in an abusive family, losing all …

During this year’s protests for Black lives, the national conversation was filled with calls to have uncomfortable conversations about anti-Blackness. This push, to talk about racism with our loved ones, has been both …

During the 48 hours of uncertainty after November 3, 2020, our producer James called over a dozen people — not to talk about Trump vs. Biden, but …

With so much attention focused on the Presidential race and other federal elections right now, we hope you'll find it refreshing to hear from Yuh-Line Niou, the only Asian American woman in New York's state legislature.

When New York City became the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, Brooklyn-based producer Beenish Ahmed struggled over whether to visit her parents in Ohio or stay put. Her parents — a landlord and hairdresser who …

How can Asian American communities create safety, when the harms of racism and xenophobia are so deeply rooted in our society?

We’ve spent time …

The rise in xenophobic harassment, discrimination, and violence against Asian Americans during the pandemic has led to a rise in neighborhood watch …

Two Asian American olds (Cathy and James) watch the original Mulan for the first time, then join a seasoned fan (Julia) — for an animated discussion …

Two incidents of anti-Asian racism — the beating of an elderly grandfather in a San Francisco park and the harassment of a mourning son in a New York pharmacy — reveal an ugly side of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the …

You’ve said the words, “Black Lives Matter.” You’ve put your money where your mouth is. You’ve shown up for the marches.

What next? What exactly is the change we’re showing up for, and how exactly can we commit to …

The struggle to save lives from COVID-19 is far from over, and neither is America’s struggle against racism.

As we report on hate crime and anti-racist action, Cathy and James hop on the phone and check in with a couple …

When we started Self Evident, we were surprised at how many people wanted a new show but hadn’t heard about all the Asian American podcasts already out there.

In this bonus episode, our team shares clips from a few …

We asked our listener community, “How did you learn where you come from?”

What came back was a wide range of personal stories about how tricky it can …

Under the Trump administration, the United States has pushed aggressively to deport Southeast Asian Americans with criminal records. Hurt that …

Three intimate conversations reveal how we deal with changes to our most deeply rooted identities, and how we tell the people who matter most.

“Unspoken”

Documentary filmmaker Patrick G. Lee tells Cathy about the …

Gabe's always felt distant from his parents: not Filipino enough for his dad, not affectionate enough for his mom. But when he moves back to his white-bread hometown to donate a kidney to his dad and work alongside him …

Sharmin Hossain, a member of New York’s Bangladeshi Feminist Collective, helps us take a hard look at the roles of class, colorism, and cultural …

Do you have a story about going to language classes, Saturday schools, religious community groups, clubs, music lessons, or other alternative …

Self Evident tells Asian American stories — but that term itself, “Asian American,” can mean many different things to different people. In this episode we present three stories from our listener community to explore the …

What does it mean to be excluded from the American Dream? Two stories, set 100 years apart, explore this question from the perspective of immigrants who think they’ve made it in America, only to find out that their …

Self Evident is where we decide where we're from, where we belong, and where we're going. Here's a peep into the stories we've presented from Asian American communities, and the reason that we make this show.

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