Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the collaborative guidance of Dr. Tamara Welter and her patient nudging of design students in the hard work, under tight deadlines, of crafting pages that combine photo storytelling with the power of color, typography, line and form. Dr. Welter and her students have collaborated in the work of Biola Avenue Press since its inception.

This year, the work of her students complements that of student writers and photojournalists in the 2021 Media Narrative Project class. Those storytellers, over a period of less than three months, read widely, chased down elusive interviewees, and did on-the-street journalistic reporting — under constraints of a global pandemic — with remarkable perseverance and courage. They worked as a team, learning from each other. But they learned most of all from people whose cultures and ways of understanding food traditions and faith experiences differ from their own. By means of computer technology, they worked from points as far distant as Richmond, California, New York City and Seoul, South Korea.

The combined work of all these students adds to an ongoing literature of Asian cultural understanding in the United States. Viewed through the lens of food, it bears new explo - ration, for it goes to press in a dark moment of our nation’s history, a time of unspeakable violence and public hatred of people from Asian backgrounds (including restaurant owners) in many parts of the U.S.

The project was enriched by the cooperation of Dr. Christina Lee Kim and Dr. Stan Ng, faculty members at Biola University whose guest appearances in the Media Narrative Project class helped students grasp the psychology of Asian hospitality culture and Asian restaurants as businesses. Their insights into how to approach sources for interviews was invaluable. Suggestions by Dr. Nancy Wang Yuen, Biola faculty member and renowned expert on Asian cultures, helped refine the scope of this project.

The project was also made possible by the support of the Division of Communication within the School of Fine Arts and Communication at Biola University, an institution whose mission, in brief, is to think biblically about everything, embracing the diversity of all humankind in an invitation to know God, through Jesus Christ, in our individual cultures and journeys.