Asian Americana Asian Americana

In Los Angeles Chinatown, local shops and restaurants eagerly welcome back customers as they return to business after the height of the pandemic shutdown. But the neighborhood’s rebound from Covid has been uneven. The pandemic has shone a light on the divide separating the successful and the struggling, as well as concerns about the varied nature of anti-Asian violence.
Producer Quincy Surasmith explores the starkly different visions for the future of L.A. Chinatown and the organizations promoting these competing ideas.

Mohammed Ahsanul is an international student at the University of Wyoming. Once he finishes his Ph.D., he expects to return home to Dhaka, Bangladesh—but not before his family reunites with him for the first time since the pandemic began.

Producer Naina Rao joins Mohammed and his family for a trip to see America as she examines the ways a better life in the U.S. doesn’t always mean a permanent stay.

Featured story from “A Better Life?” podcast:

Jasmine Jiwani is part of Atlanta’s large Ismaili Muslim community. Covid restrictions prevented the community from gathering for the funeral of her husband, who died of Covid-19. Producer Zulekha Nathoo reports on how the pandemic has created unique challenges for Jiwani and other Ismaili Muslims.

Timothy Singratsomboune had a complicated relationship to country music. How did his own experiences bring him away from and eventually back to the genre? And how does country music connect Tim to both Lao culture and the Lao communities he grew up around?

In this episode, we explore the connections between Asian Americans, country music, and rural life.

Five years ago in Spring of 2016, we launched Asian Americana. For our fifth anniversary, we take a moment to revisit all of the stories we’ve done from our first episode through the end of 2020. What happened after we stopped recording? What are those people doing now? Listen and find out.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been in the United States for over a year, but the way we each think about it is shaped heavily by how it does or doesn’t directly affect us individually. For some people, they’ve become all too familiar with the impact of the coronavirus. Contributor Denise Chan shares her family’s experience with Covid-19 from her podcast, Until it Happened to Us, which originally ran in December of 2020.