Author: Boen Wang
Bio: Boen Wang is a writer, audio producer, and graduate of the University of Pittsburgh's MFA program in creative writing, where he specialized in audio storytelling. His written work has appeared in The Sunday Long Read, The Fourth River, Inheritance, PopMatters, and elsewhere. His audio work has appeared in WNYC's Radiolab, KCRW's Bodies, WESA's The Allegheny Front and The Confluence, and was selected as one of The Bello Collective's "100 Outstanding Podcasts of 2020." He is the winner of the "Best New Artist" award at the 2020 Third Coast International Audio Festival, a finalist for the 2021 HearSay Audio Festival Prize, a 2022 AIR Media New Voices fellow, and a 2023 MDOCS Storytellers' Institute Visiting Fellow at Skidmore College.
Contributions:
How to Wash Your Brain — “A Better Life?” Podcast
Posted on: 22 Mar 2023
Writer and producer Boen Wang and his Chinese-born mom disagree on almost every political issue. Each suspects that the other has been “brainwashed”, because how else could they have such extreme views? In this personal piece, Boen unpacks the epistemology and history of the term brainwashing, and goes on an intimate exploration of his mom’s childhood and experiences in the U.S. to figure out what has actually shaped her political beliefs—and his own.