What this archive is

A record of Asian American family life as the families themselves describe it, collected by high-school students, kept by the Tarita Foundation so that someone in a hundred years can know what one particular family ate on a Tuesday, which language the grandmother spoke to the father, and how the family told itself the story of coming to America.

Why it exists

Histories of immigration are written in aggregates: how many people arrived in which decade, what laws they met, what the economy did. What those histories almost never contain is the texture of a single household at a single moment, because that texture was rarely written down. Letters survive by accident. Oral histories survive on purpose. This archive is the on-purpose kind.

It began in 2026 as a project of the Tarita Foundation, a student-led nonprofit working to bring Asian American history into American classrooms. The founder, Jeffrey Liu, is a high-school student in Massachusetts; most contributors so far are his classmates and their families, which is where every archive has to start.

Two kinds of record

Recorded interview

A conversation of roughly fifteen to forty-five minutes, recorded with the contributor’s knowledge and consent, published as audio with a verbatim transcript. The interviewer works from the archive’s question set but follows the conversation where it goes. 2 so far.

Family questionnaire

Written answers to a fixed set of questions about food, language, arrival, expectations, and what the contributor wants remembered. Published exactly as written, spelling and all, because the way a sixteen-year-old describes their grandmother’s kitchen is itself the evidence. 18 so far.

The questions

The questionnaire asks, in order:

1. What languages get spoken in your house, and who speaks which to whom?
2. Describe a normal weeknight dinner at your house.
3. Is there a dish your family makes that you have never seen anywhere else?
4. What is in your kitchen that would not be in most of your friends' kitchens?
5. Where does your family food shop, and how far do they drive to do it?
6. What happens in your house on a Sunday?
7. Is there a word or phrase your family uses at home that does not really translate?
8. What sport, instrument or activity did you end up doing — and who decided?
9. What do your parents expect of you, said out loud or not?
10. When did you first understand that your family was seen as Asian American — and what happened?
11. What do you get asked about being Asian American that you are tired of being asked?
12. Is there something about your family you did not understand until recently?
13. What was the first job or business anyone in your family had in America?
14. What city or neighbourhood did your family first live in when they arrived?
15. Is there a story about your family that gets retold?
16. What is one thing about America that someone in your family still finds strange, or funny?
17. Is there something your family does not talk about?
18. Who in your family would you most want interviewed properly, and why?
19. Look around your house. What is one object your family would never throw away?
20. What is happening in the photos you uploaded?
21. What do you want someone to know about your family in a hundred years?
22. Anything else?

Recorded interviews use a shorter set of the same questions, then follow whatever the contributor opens up.

The rules the archive keeps

1. The words are the contributor’s

Transcripts are verbatim. Questionnaire answers are published as typed. The archive does not correct grammar, tidy spelling, or trim an answer to make it read better. Where a transcript could not make out a word, it says so in brackets.

2. Names are published exactly as chosen

Every contributor was asked how their name should appear: full name, initials only, first name only, or anonymous. The archive uses that answer and never adds a surname, a school, or any other identifier the contributor did not choose to give. Where a contributor left the question blank, the archive defaults to the most private reasonable option.

3. Consent is explicit and revocable

Each record carries the contributor’s answer to “May the Tarita Foundation keep this in its archive, for educational and historical use?” Only records answered “Yes” are published. A contributor can correct or withdraw a record at any time by writing to taritafoundation@gmail.com; the record is then removed and its identifier retired, never reassigned.

4. Nothing is invented to fill a gap

If a contributor skipped a question, the question is not shown. If a date or spelling is uncertain, the record says so under “Editorial notes.” An archive that admits a gap is worth more than one that quietly fills it.

5. Photographs wait for a second yes

Several contributors uploaded family photographs and documents. Those are held in the archive but not published until the contributor confirms, in writing, which ones may appear and how they should be captioned. One contributor asked that their photographs never be published; they will not be.

Who collects

Interviews and questionnaires are collected by Tarita Foundation student volunteers, who are trained on the question set and on the consent script. Every record names how it was collected. Transcription is done by machine and checked by a person; the checker’s open questions are recorded on the entry.

How to use it

Read it. Search it. Cite it: each record has a stable identifier and a ready citation. Download the whole archive as JSON or CSV. Researchers who want to follow up with a contributor should write to the archive, which will pass the request on where the contributor agreed to be contacted.