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Inheriting
Inheriting explores how one event in history can ripple through generations of a family.

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ABOUT THE PODCAST

"Inheriting" is a show about Asian American and Pacific Islander families, which explores how one event in history can ripple through generations. In doing so, the show seeks to break apart the AAPI monolith and tell a fuller story of these communities. In each episode, NPR’s Emily Kwong sits down with one family and facilitates deeply emotional conversations between their loved ones, exploring how their most personal, private moments are an integral part of history. Through these stories, we show how the past is personal and how to live with the legacies we’re constantly inheriting.

Subscribe to “Inheriting” on your app of choice here.

Check out our digital resource guide with tips for interviewing your own family members, books, films and K-12 lesson plans from The Asian American Education Project to help process the historical moments covered on the show.

Also, we want to stay connected! Email us at inheriting@laiststudios.com with questions, feedback, or to share your own story.

Enter your email to stay updated on the podcast and LAist’s coverage of AAPI communities!
Awards
Inheriting Resource Guide

  • For those who want to begin interviewing their own relatives, we've created a digital resource guide with oral history tips. The guide also includes books, films, additional reporting and more to help process the historical moments covered on the show. Plus, K-12 lesson plans from The Asian American Education Project.
Inheriting is entirely funded by supporters like you
If you found meaning in these stories and want to hear future seasons, donate now to help us make season two. Your gift to help make season two of Inheriting will go twice as far because your donation today will be matched dollar-for-dollar by Jihee and Peter Huh!
Episodes
  • The podcast title "Inheriting" in all caps at the top of the image. Three people sit around a table in the foreground talking with a mic. In the background, people walk across a bridge. The colors in the image are a warm reddish, purple and orange.
    Listen • 5:00
    Listen • 5:00
    LAist Studios And NPR Launch 'Inheriting' Series
    The new podcast will be about Asian American and Pacific Islanders, and how one event in history can ripple through generations of a family.
  • Listen • 47:09
    Listen • 47:09
    Episode 1: Carol & the Los Angeles Uprising: Part 1
    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 never understood why her mother insisted on keeping the business going, especially after the Uprising. As an adult, a personal crisis prompts Carol to finally start processing that event and her place in history. Content Warning: This episode contains racial slurs and discusses police brutality.
  • INHERITING-CAROL-PARK
    Listen • 42:35
    Listen • 42:35
    Episode 2: What She Didn’t Know About The 1992 LA Uprising As A Child Cashier, But Understands Now As A Professor
    Episode 2 of “Inheriting” follows Carol Kwang Park’s mission to truly understand the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising and how it impacted her family.
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  • INHERITING-VICTORIA-UCE
    Listen • 41:33
    Listen • 41:33
    Episode 3: A Cambodian American Helps Her Dad Process His Past As A Survivor Of Genocide
    Episode 3 of "Inheriting" focuses on the Cambodian community in Long Beach, and Victoria Uce's questions for her father about his childhood under the Khmer Rogue.
  • An Asian man with dark hair, black-rimmed glasses, wearing a black vest over a white shirt and a dark brown pants holds a green shopping cart at the entrance of a market with a green awning and text that reads "Thuan Phat Supermarket" in both English and Vietnamese.
    Listen • 46:00
    Listen • 46:00
    Episode 4: How A Father And Son Reconcile Their Clashing Homesickness For Vietnam
    A son and father reconcile their homesickness for Vietnam 50 years after the war ended.
  • INHERITING-LEAH-BASH
    Listen • 48:39
    Listen • 48:39
    Episode 5: How did Japanese American incarceration shape the generations that followed?
    Episode 5 of "Inheriting" follows Leah Bash’s journey to understand how Japanese American incarceration during WWII impacted her family’s mental health.
  • A woman wearing a beige and light brown hijab and a beige tunic stands embracing and looking up at man who is bald and wears a dark blue sweater with green, red, and yellow stripes. His hand is on the woman's shoulder as he smiles at her.
    Listen • 43:41
    Listen • 43:41
    Episode 6: How Post-9/11 Activism Changed A Muslim American Family
    Saira Sayeed and Shakeel Syed open up about how the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 affected their marriage and Muslim American family on Episode 6 of Inheriting.
  • An older man with medium-light skin tone and a gray goatee wearing a shirt with tropical plants stands next to a young woman with medium-light skin tone long dark hair and a hibiscus flower in her hair. They are standing in the lawn of a cemetery.
    Listen • 36:29
    Listen • 36:29
    Episode 7: This CHamoru library student learned a distorted version of her family’s history. What she discovered is the truth
    Leialani Wihongi-Santos tells the truth about her family’s history on Guam — and fights to protect her CHamoru heritage with her grandpa on Episode 7 of “Inheriting.”
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  • Listen • 30:27
    Listen • 30:27
    Episode 8: What does AAPI really stand for?
    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 Barack Obama's White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Emily and Sefa also discuss how Pacific Islander experiences are often marginalized in so-called AAPI spaces, leading to misleading data sets, funding inequities, and erasure of history.
  • A Filipina woman with long dark hair wearing a patterned dark blue and beige blouse with pronounced shoulders stands near a stairwell in front of a large mural.
    Listen • 1:57
    Listen • 1:57
    Episode 9: This Filipino student leader changed higher education. You probably don’t know his name
    Episode 9 of “Inheriting” highlights Filipino activist Patrick Salaver, one of the student leaders behind the Third World Liberation Front, and his niece’s quest to honor his legacy.
  • A panel of six people speak on a black stage in front of a pink and purple backdrop that reads "Inheriting: How do we talk about family histories?"
    Listen • 1:01:39
    Listen • 1:01:39
    Episode 10: How do we talk about our family histories?
    Episode 10 of “Inheriting” is an immersive look at the story behind-the-show, recorded in front of a live audience. Plus, takeaways for interviewing your own family members.

Credits

Thanks & Support

Inheriting is entirely funded by supporters. A special thanks to Jihee and Peter Huh, Winnie Kho, Stewart and Pat Kwoh, Bryant Garth, Ying Cai and Wann Lee, Fred and Diana Kong, Joanna Kong, Denise and Joseph Lumarda, and Cathay Bank, as well as all the donors who gave specifically to Inheriting.

  • Headshot of Jihee Huh
    Jihee Huh
  • Headshot of Peter Huh
    Peter Huh
  • Headshot of Winnie Kho
    Winnie Kho