As a kid, I had always wondered why my mom kept this old, practically antique, landline phone around in our house. It hasn't worked since when I was in elementary school but I remember constantly playing with it and pretending to make important phone calls to my classmates or my neighbors down the street. Little did I know that while this phone was just a toy for me to play make-believe with, my mom treasured this phone deeply for it was one of the first things she purchased when she immigrated to New York City from China. On this phone, the important calls she would make were to her family members back home. She would call nearly every week and she would spend hours on the phone conversing with friends and family as she would have done back in China. The little orange card next to the phone is a prepaid phone card that was used by her back in the day to make calls to China and these types of phone cards are used still to this day by many, especially immigrants, to make international calls back home.

– April Lam

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