Uncovering & Preserving Our Stories
Talk Story, often associated with Hawaii, is both concept and process. For the 1882 Foundation, it refers to the set of activities and programs that we associate with collecting oral histories and preserving story sites. These include our monthly Talk Story Events and efforts to record and store oral histories. They include the production of the Through Chinatown’s Eyes short documentary series. They are related to heritage tours.
Talk Story encourages individuals to reveal their stories in their own words and to share them with others. There are two parts to this—telling and sharing. “Telling” refers to people saying what is historically important to them. This is empowering. It allows them to define themselves, the elements of their identity, as opposed to having an “historian” define for them what is historically important.
Talk Story, often associated with Hawaii, is both concept and process. For the 1882 Foundation, it refers to the set of activities and programs that we associate with collecting oral histories and preserving story sites. These include our monthly Talk Story Events and efforts to record and store oral histories. They include the production of the Through Chinatown’s Eyes short documentary series. They are related to heritage tours.
Talk Story encourages individuals to reveal their stories in their own words and to share them with others. There are two parts to this—telling and sharing. “Telling” refers to people saying what is historically important to them. This is empowering. It allows them to define themselves, the elements of their identity, as opposed to having an “historian” define for them what is historically important.
Talks Story – Recaps & Posts
On Thursday, June 26, 2025, the 1882 Foundation hosted a zine-making event at the 1882 office with 14 attendees. The goal of this event was to encourage attendees to share […]
On Saturday, May 31, 2025, the 1882 Foundation hosted a tai chi workshop with Terence Nicholson, practitioner and teacher of Chinese martial arts, curator, artist, and musician. The event was […]
On April 30, 2025, the 1882 Foundation partnered with Politics and Prose to host Michael Luo and Jia Lynn Yang to discuss his newest book, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, […]
Missed a Talk Story?
Many of our talk stories after December 2018 are available in our Digital Archive.
You can also check out our blog for detailed recaps for the events, and check out our Facebook Live videos for live footage of the programs!
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To the extent the stories resonate with others and groups coalesce to listen, our communities become defined. The “sharing” of a common legacy and the inspiration to re-tell them in a modern setting and even to go out and create new stories make the community alive.
This leads to our Talk Story slogan, inspired partially by Bonnie Tsui’s observation in American Chinatown: