It’s an album filled with photographs of my early childhood, including the years when I lived in China, and it’s populated with family members, cousins, and photographs of myself. One of the reasons why it’s so imbued with meaning for me is because I immigrated when I was four, and I don’t actually have any memories of living in China. When I immigrated to the US, my line back to a lot of my relatives was through these photographs, and my past was being reconstructed in many ways through these photographs that I had and what I could see because I couldn’t actually remember what it was like to live there. These photographs are visual reminders and in many ways have just a ton of sentimental value for me. I don’t think we called family members all that often. Back then it was still pretty pricey to make international calls. Certainly there was no such thing as Skype or Google Hangout back then.You learned what your relatives’ faces look like and you imagined what they were like oftentimes through being jolted by these visual images.

Learn more: www.my-america.org 

Relationship:  Im/migrant who arrived as a child Im/migrant who arrived as a child