chaotic updates

and months pass, in the blink of an eye

I started this draft in January, and suddenly, it’s August. There’s…been a lot going on outside of my life as an artist.

play with mud, grow wild strawberries, compete in kung fu, lion dance, put on kid shows, fight ICE, make snacks

🌱❀art-life recap ❀🌱

• Noodle & Bao: A Graphic Novel was nominated for the middle grade category New England Book Awards. OMG! An AWARD?! 🥺 If you are a bookseller, you can vote for it here. Thank youuuu!

  • Not a bookseller, but still want to support the book? You can buy it from a bookstore (for yourself, for a friend, etc). Request it at your local library. You can also give it a review on Amazon or on Goodreads.

• Illuminate: Contextualizing Asian American Women’s Stories through the Archives - I had such a fun time creating these super big window murals for the Schlesinger Library! I also have two zines in the show (one about Parcel C and one about my Yeh-yeh). The show is up until Jan 2026, so you can still check it out until then! I highly recommend it — not just to see my work (lol) — but I learned a lot from the careful work that superstar curator Victor Betts did. Read more here about the window murals.

  

• Between the Bricks: A Field Guide to Imagined Gardens - I had the pleasure of creating a spread about Chinatown Backyard for this adorable Chinatown garden-themed zine for the Pao Arts Center (Where We Meet: Imagining Gardens and Futures) and Isabella Steward Gardner Museum (Ming Fay: Edge of the Garden). The zine and exhibits also include some of my favorite local artists, so please be sure to check out both exhibits and pick one up for yourself!

  

• Art Teaching: I wrapped up my first semester teaching graduate/senior-level students at MassArt, and it was such a new experience for me. At the same time, I also was teaching my little ones in Chinatown, and we got to do a number of fun things: a mural, an end of year art show, and more! One thing that I’m realizing that I love about teaching is that relationships I form with students — in the end, students might not remember skills you teach them or projects you do with them, as much as they remember how you made them feel as a human in your classroom. I’m looking forward to teaching both the big and little ones again in the Fall.

a few 🍓 to look forward to

• Still work on my book about Detroit Summer (Penguin Kokila). More to come VERY soon on this. Mark your calendars for Summer 2027!

• Also making some progress on my fantasy graphic novel (HarperCollins Quill Tree Books). I just moved into the thumbnail stage for this. I’m very excited to share both books soon! 🍓

• I’m working with the Boston Public Schools’ Ethnic Studies Department on an art project (hopefully to be done soon this month).

• I’ve also been working, slowly but surely, on the illustrations People’s Map of (Boston) Chinatown. It’s been a joy to look through archival materials to help me with my project illustrations.

a few things i’m enjoying & want *you* to enjoy

• We got a new record for our house - Anri’s Timely!! We are enjoying it a lot, and I thought you might too.

• Angela Hsieh’s debut middle-grade graphic novel Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology came out this year! Two friends travel a beautiful fantasy world, making friends and enemies (lol) along the way to find Lu’s Ah-ma, a famous geozoologist who mysteriously disappeared. There’s just so much to love about the book. (And it’s in full color. All hail Angela. My hand felt like it was already going to fall off from using a limited palette.)

• ok thanks byeeeeeeee.