We are delighted to unveil our artists’ book premiere —a divergent ensemble of non-binary transmigratory spirits coalescing to embody an emergent creative collective, on the move: visual artists, poets, scholars, urban planners, and activists, expressing a rich heritage of Asian diasporic maternal lineages—Tamil, Hmong, Laotian, Kazakh, Filipina, Indian, Chinese, Korean, and more.

This book is a gastronomic journey through stories, recipes, and artistic imagination. It challenges the undervaluation of culinary traditions and posits food as a language for communicating the transforming lived realities and aspirations of Asian diasporic communities. Seeds, integral to the narratives of family recipes contributed by women and non-binary humans, become metaphorical vehicles for transformation. These seeds manifest as temporary tattoos, embodying an ephemeral form of visual storytelling—a codified language and an ancestral practice linking the margins of society. The pairing of culinary traditions with tattoos becomes a counter-narrative, redefining the meaning of resistance and self-expression.