JOSS PAPER LIBRARY

aking its name from joss paper, the spirit money used as burnt offerings for the ancestors, Joss Paper Library (JPL) emerged in 2019 as a collaborative project between close friends Christina Lee and Y Vy Truong. Lee, an urban planning and geography student, has deep connections to Vancouver’s Chinatown, having worked closely with the Hua Foundation, a youth empowerment non-profit, and participated in organized action against the proposed condo tower at 105 Keefer Street. The protests made national news and the condo proposal was eventually struck down by a city council vote. Soon after the protest, Lee reached out to Truong and they came up with the idea for Joss Paper Library. To get the project going, Truong leaned on her volunteer work in the library at (1987) in class, while she was completing her degree in history, which depicted a version of the Vietnam war that felt so opposite from what her parents had experienced. “At Centre A, I was able to look at what artists were doing in terms of historical narratives and having fun with archiving and history,” Truong says. “Doing that work also brought to light another understanding of my identity.”