This summer marks my fourteenth year outside the country I call home.  I can attribute my every life’s milestone to cities across Asia --my first words in Hong Kong, my first cell phone in Bangkok, first braces in Beijing, and high school graduation in Seoul. The experience has given me much, but there are some things that have escaped me. One is sentimentality because moving boxes from city to city every few years doesn’t leave much room for impracticalities. Certain things always come first. Towels and blankets are more important than arts-and-crafts from my elementary school and, for the many moves we’ve made, my parents chose what stayed and what came with us, and the things carried over marked for me what was important.  I know very little about my extended family. My grandparents immigrated to America in the early 1900’s. They never learned English and brought nothing they could not carry, leaving behind impracticable things in their South China villages, perhaps choosing the slimmest of something of sentimental value.  My choice, through all our moves, is Goodnight Moon.  It is where I placed memories.  The book reminds me that my immigrant parents and grandparents had also left behind things.  I have wondered what they were and what I might learn about my extended family if could touch the things I know they must have placed as memories into another thing like my Goodnight Moon. 

– Gabriella Chu, Seoul Foreign School, 1882 Foundation Me + 3 Fellow

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant