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The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) warmly invites you to an insightful conversation with Melissa Hung and Bernice Yeung, co-founders of Hyphen magazine. Established in 2002 as a direct response to the closure of A. Magazine, Hyphen emerged from the collective vision of a new generation of Asian American voices.

Melissa Hung and Bernice Yeung, friends since their college days at Northwestern University, were deeply saddened by the shuttering of this influential publication. Determined to address this void, they convened a gathering of writers and scholars—including Chris Fan, Claire Light, and Oliver Wang—in San Francisco. From this pivotal meeting, the concept of Hyphen magazine was born. Its name symbolizes the intersectionality of identities and the connections within the Asian American community. Hyphen challenged stereotypical portrayals of Asian Americans by skillfully blending rigorous investigative journalism with creative and offbeat cultural coverage.

Following the discussion, a reunion reception will provide an opportunity for Hyphen readers, contributors, and community members to reconnect, share stories, and explore MOCA’s special exhibition, Magazine Fever: Gen X Asian American Periodicals:

In the 1980s and ’90s, as Asian American identity transformed from a radical vision born of political agitation into a broadly recognized demographic, how did ethnic magazines reflect this new consciousness? Magazine Fever surveys a surge of Asian American magazine publishing during the multicultural era including A. Magazine, AsiAm, AsianWeek, Audrey, Giant Robot, Hyphen, Jade, KoreAm, Rice, Transpacific, YOLK, and others. Through magazine publishing, a vital form of mass media in the 1990s, Asian Americans editorialized issues central to their lives and depicted themselves in ways that were unimaginable before. Magazine Fever presents stories of Generation X magazines–how they were founded and sustained; how they captured the essence of multiculturalism and Generation X paradigms, and how they impacted the ways Asian American identity is understood today.

About Melissa Hung

Melissa Hung is a writer and journalist. She is the founding editor in chief of Hyphen and served in leadership roles at the independent magazine for more than a decade. Melissa writes about immigrant communities, culture, food, disability, grief, and more. Her essays and reported stories have appeared in NPR, Vogue, Longreads, and the anthologies Body Language and Disability Intimacy. A 2024 Sewanee Scholar, she is at work on a collection of creative nonfiction about her mother and inheritance. She grew up in Houston, Texas, the eldest child of Chinese immigrants.

About Bernice Yeung

Bernice Yeung is a co-founder and former board member of Hyphen, and has contributed to Asian American media outlets such as A. Magazine and public radio’s “Pacific Time.” Currently, she’s the managing editor of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Before that, she was a reporter for ProPublica and “Reveal” from The Center for Investigative Reporting. The author of In a Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers, Bernice’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times and PBS Frontline. She grew up in San Jose, California, to immigrants from Hong Kong.