Inheriting

What does it mean to be an American? There’s no one way. At NPR, we think of the American identity as a story - one that's always being rewritten by the people who live it. The American Storytelling collection gathers stories from local stations across the NPR Network - from small town struggles, to natural phenomena, to the intricate histories that build the constantly-evolving tale of our nation...

This week, we bring you a special bonus episode from our friends at the podcast StoryCorps. Willie Ito and Shigeru "Shig" Yabu, childhood best friends, remember being sent to separate Japanese Internment camps as kids, and how they came together to tell their story decades later. Stay connected with us! Email us at inheriting@laiststudios.com to share your questions, feelings, and even your story....

This week, we bring you a special bonus episode from our friends at the podcast Ten Thousand Things with Shin Yu Pai. Janet Lee, a freshman at Bryn Mawr, was heading home for Christmas break when she was detained by the police for alleged drug smuggling. Janet wasn't carrying any drugs. But the treatment she received from the Philadelphia police department and from her own community would change h...

This week, we bring you a special bonus episode from our friends at the podcast Self Evident: Asian America's Stories. 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 that nostalgia is a history of war and colonization, and the inheritance of both favorite foods and hidden traumas. Korean American pla...

Our final episode of Season 1 is a special "Inheriting" event recorded in front of a live audience. Host Emily Kwong is joined on stage by Bảo Trương (Episode 4), Shakeel Syed and Saira Sayeed (Episode 6), and Leialani Wihongi-Santos and Joseph Aflleje-Santos (Episode 7). They reveal what it was like to tell their stories and explore their family histories on "Inheriting." Then, Emily is joined by...

Nicole Salaver's uncle, Patrick Salaver, was one of the leaders of the Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State University in the late 1960s. This movement not only led to the recognition of the term "Asian American," but also brought ethnic studies to colleges nationwide. Pat made a difference in the world as a Filipino civil rights leader, but is largely unknown by the public. Now, Ni...

Should the acronym "AAPI" even exist? In this special episode, we deconstruct it – tracing the 50-year history of the terms "Asian American" and "Pacific Islander" and interrogating how they are used today. Emily talks with Sefa Aina, associate dean and director of the Draper Center for Community Partnerships at Pomona College. He is also a longtime community organizer who served on President Bara...

Leialani Wihongi-Santos is CHamoru and was raised on the island of Guam with a distorted view of history. She was taught that the United States "saved" her island from occupation by Imperial Japan. As she's gotten older, Leialani has learned that framing is not entirely true. In some ways, the U.S. military took advantage of the island and the people who live there, sometimes destroying culture an...

Shakeel Syed has been a longtime activist within his South Asian community, fighting for the civil liberties of Muslims who were targeted by the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department following the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. But his activism had a cost. He was away from home on nights and weekends, absent from his wife, Saira Sayeed, and their four kids. Saira took on the work a...

Leah Bash is an avid runner, a dog mom, a wife – and there's a part of her family's history she can't stop thinking about. The fact that both sides of her family were incarcerated alongside 125,000 other Japanese Americans during World War II. Her father and his six siblings spent more than three years behind barbed wire at isolated camps in Manzanar, California and Crystal City, Texas. After Leah...

Bảo Trương's parents both fled Vietnam in 1975 following the war. His father Thuận was a pilot for the South Vietnamese Air Force and left the day before the Fall of Saigon, evacuating almost 100 people to Thailand on a plane. Thuận has now been settled in the U.S. for decades, but he still writes songs mourning the Vietnam of his childhood – a country that, to him, no longer exists because it is...

Growing up in Long Beach, California, Victoria Uce was surrounded by a loving and supportive family, while her dad, Bo, lost his parents at a young age in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Victoria only ever knew the basics of this story. Mainly, that her dad was forced to join the country's mobile youth brigade and take part in the state-sponsored violence that tore Cambodia apart. In this episode,...

In part two of Carol Kwang Park's story, we follow Carol's journey to connect more deeply with her family – and introduce the family-led conversations that are central to "Inheriting." Decades after the 1992 L.A. Uprising, Carol finally learns what her mom experienced during the riots and how she made it back home. It allows for a better understanding of her mother, as well as her family's journey...

Carol Kwang Park was 12 years old, working as a cashier at her family's gas station in Compton, California, when the 1992 L.A. Uprising forever changed her life. Her mom was at the gas station that day and Carol was unsure if she'd even make it home. At the time, she didn't understand why tensions came to a head in Los Angeles, following the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King. She also...

Japanese American Incarceration. The Third World Liberation Front. The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising. What you think you know isn't always the full story. "Inheriting" is a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families that explores how the past is personal. Hosted by NPR's Emily Kwong, we go deep with families on how their most personal, private moments are part of history. To manage podcas...