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line. Ask code switch. Okay,

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on to the show. You're

1:01

listening to Code Switch. I'm Lori

1:03

Lissaraga. And I'm BA Parker. Last

1:06

year, I found myself guiding Lori

1:08

on an impromptu city tour. What's

1:11

cool around here? Yeah, we are

1:13

thankful for trees. Wow. There's

1:15

a place I've been reading about that I really want

1:17

to visit while I'm in the city. From

1:20

Midtown, it's about as far south toward the East River

1:22

as you can go. There's a cab

1:24

ride, a half mile walk and a

1:26

subway involved. As you exit, please be

1:28

careful of the gap between the And you

1:31

need help figuring out which train to get

1:33

on. Oh, no, that's good. That's good. We

1:36

get off the regular ranch. We're on our

1:38

way to Chinatown. And then we walk

1:40

0.4 miles. And

1:42

then we'll get to my street. Lori,

1:47

you got this. You take it from here. After

1:49

all it took to get here, the first thing I

1:51

noticed about this neighborhood is the quiet.

1:57

It feels very, very Bubbled

1:59

in. And protect it from

2:01

a subtle at just came from

2:03

it. It's it's distinctly less overwhelming.

2:06

Zelig, a silky smell that familiar

2:08

to me. Were looking for a

2:10

nineteen thirteen apartment building. It's.

2:12

The family home of author A The

2:14

Chin and where It Sits is the

2:17

title of her books Much Three: A

2:19

Chinese American family story of exclusion and

2:21

homecoming. What? We

2:23

find is a six story red brick

2:25

building with Chinese characters down the front.

2:27

They are store friends on the first

2:29

floor with colorful awnings, an American flag

2:32

hung up on one side, and a

2:34

flag of the Republic of China. On

2:36

the other. Are standing.

2:38

At the intersection of my

2:40

and Tell. Them

2:44

attendees. Evil arrived on Months Street in the

2:46

nineteenth century. And. They discovered

2:48

a really and. Thriving. Neighborhood:

2:50

It was right next to

2:52

the Five Points area of

2:55

the notorious neighborhood. But it

2:57

was a working class neighborhood, you

2:59

know, And it and multi lingual,

3:02

multi ethnic, that's if it's him.

3:04

So when Chinese folks like my

3:06

family members arrived there, they sounds.

3:08

A variety of different immigrant groups

3:11

and they also found a home

3:13

there with other Chinese people. She

3:16

wrote. Her books here in this

3:18

same apartment building where both sides

3:20

of her family forty nine grandparents,

3:22

great grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins

3:25

lived before her. I

3:27

read something in her authors note about that. That

3:29

stuck with me. That. It was in

3:31

disappointment in the process. Of writing her family

3:34

story. And our ancestors began

3:36

speaking to her, bursting through walls,

3:38

begging her to write faster, demanding

3:40

to be heard, I

3:43

remember the first time I

3:45

walked into the building and

3:47

walked into one of his

3:49

apartments that my family members

3:52

had given birth to the

3:54

next generation. My my father's

3:56

generation And it really sounds

3:58

like, oh, While could talk

4:01

and once I counted out how

4:03

many family members. Had

4:05

actually lived. In the building,

4:07

I realize that the building felt like

4:09

a kind of womb. To

4:12

be entire family. But

4:16

the story we here isn't just significant

4:18

to a of his family, it chronicles

4:20

entire chapter of history. Ones. That

4:22

shape the fate of immigrants and the identity

4:24

of Chinese Americans for generations. Really?

4:26

All Americans? So I

4:29

sat down with Eva to talk more about

4:31

that. And

4:33

with us. Miss.

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Message comes from Npr sponsor Discover.

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5:48

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advice for camping and glamping,

5:54

biking and hiking, axeing and

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another outdoor thing that rhymes with

6:01

backpacking. Visit your local REI

6:03

co-op or rei.com for the million

6:06

and one ways you can opt

6:08

outside. This

6:10

book is about one immigrant family

6:12

story, your story, but to

6:14

tell it, you have to go back generations,

6:18

centuries of time at certain points for pages and

6:20

pages of historical events. And what we learned is

6:22

that your family is kind of in

6:25

all the hits. I mean, from

6:28

the building on the Transcontinental Railroad and

6:30

the Tong Wars in the late 1800s

6:32

to the emergence of

6:34

San Francisco and New York's

6:36

Chinatowns, and the Chinese

6:38

American story was built on the historical

6:40

events that your

6:43

family, in many cases, witnessed

6:46

or was a central part of. I

6:49

mean, when you started the research for

6:51

this book, did you realize how deep

6:53

that thread ran through your family? No,

6:57

when I first started doing this research,

6:59

I really thought that I was just

7:01

trying to understand my family, right? So

7:04

I was raised by a single mother.

7:07

I was estranged from my father and

7:09

his whole side of the family, right?

7:13

The family who raised me only ever spoke

7:15

about them in whispers. They said they were

7:17

bigwigs in Chinatown and I didn't

7:19

even know what that meant. On the same

7:22

hand, one of

7:24

the first stories I ever learned about

7:26

was from the grandfather who raised me

7:29

who was a descendant of a

7:31

Chinese railroad worker who worked on

7:33

the nation's first Transcontinental Railroad. And

7:36

that was the apparatus that I later

7:38

learned physically,

7:41

at least, helped unite the country after the

7:43

Civil War. Right, and in the

7:45

book, you write about those stories about your

7:47

great, great grandfather, Yuan Sun. When

7:50

Yuan Sun arrived in the 1860s, he

7:53

and the others still referred to

7:55

California and by extension the entire

7:57

country by his gold rush name.

8:00

the Golden Sun, the Gold Mountain. Although

8:03

that era had long since passed, the

8:06

feeling amongst the new arrivals was that

8:08

through their luck and determination, like Man

8:10

Man, Ban Tong, 10,000 stampeding

8:13

horses, galloping full steam

8:15

ahead, they were going to strike it rich.

8:19

Together, Yuan Sun and his

8:21

countrymen labored in California's High

8:23

Sierra Nevada, dangling off

8:25

rugged cliffs and baskets loaded

8:27

with explosives, blasting tunnels

8:30

through miles of granite, laying grade

8:32

even in the deepest winter, sometimes

8:35

in over 40 feet of

8:37

snow. The railroad

8:39

stories in our family

8:41

played such

8:44

a large part in

8:46

how we identified ourselves as

8:49

Chinese Americans, that I

8:51

really thought I knew everything there was

8:53

to know about the railroad by the

8:55

time I hit grade school. And

8:57

I remember one day I was in class

8:59

and I opened up the big textbook in

9:02

American history that was devoted to the

9:04

completion of the railroad and I saw the

9:06

photo, the official photograph, and

9:08

not a single Chinese face was

9:10

staring back at me in the

9:12

photo. And I just thought, what

9:15

is this nonsense? What are

9:17

they saying here? And

9:20

I think, honestly, that was probably one of

9:22

the things that made me a writer, was

9:25

realizing that there were these stories

9:28

that were not told and that needed to be

9:30

told. Very early on in

9:32

the pages of Monastery, you write, "'It

9:35

is a general rule of thumb among

9:37

researchers and historians alike, that

9:39

it is the written record that

9:41

is the gold standard and

9:43

the family stories that are long

9:45

untwisted falsehoods, embellishment and tall tales.

9:48

You found over and over that the

9:51

official historical record was riddled with

9:53

fiction and fabrication and half truths.

9:55

And in some cases, outright lies."

9:58

What were some of the lies that... shocked

10:00

you. The male to my

10:02

grandfather to our house came

10:05

under a different name and my

10:08

grandmother said oh that's his paper name and

10:10

I thought well I don't know anybody else

10:12

none of my friends have family

10:15

members whose male comes under

10:17

a different name. Is the grandpa

10:19

here under a false identity?

10:22

And it took me

10:24

a while to realize and put

10:27

together what this all meant right?

10:30

I flew out to Seattle, Washington where

10:32

grandpa had first landed in America and

10:35

where I was given clearance to review

10:37

his Chinese Exclusion Act file at the

10:39

National Archives offices. The

10:42

deposition contained a photograph of grandpa at

10:44

16 years old and another man who

10:46

claimed to be his father who no

10:49

one in my family could identify. I

10:52

had never seen my grandfather at that age.

10:55

He was heart-meltingly young and fleeing

10:57

the Japanese invasion of China and

10:59

here he was stuck in a

11:01

facility that was essentially a jail.

11:05

I looked down at the official file before me

11:07

an inch thick. It

11:09

would take me another few years

11:11

and to move to China before

11:13

I learned that this elaborate scheme,

11:16

a part of the larger exclusion

11:18

apparatus, had turned his real uncle

11:20

into a paper father rendering

11:22

grandpa a paper son. The

11:25

Chinese Exclusion Act file was a complete

11:28

and utter fiction. So

11:32

we should probably back up a little bit

11:34

and talk about what the Chinese Exclusion Act

11:36

is please. Okay so the

11:38

Chinese Exclusion Act was our

11:40

country's first major federal

11:43

immigration restrictions. It was the first

11:45

time our country's borders shut for

11:47

the very first time against a

11:50

particular nationality. And

11:53

what it did was it effectively

11:55

halted legal Chinese immigration

11:57

into the country and blocked that

11:59

pathway. Toward the Sunset

12:01

For over sixty years, It's

12:04

sorry days and eighteen eighty Two

12:06

And then went on. And so

12:08

the nineteen. Forties during World

12:10

War Two, when the Us.

12:13

needed China as an ally

12:15

against Pam. It

12:17

also was really important because it's set the

12:19

tone. For future immigration restrictions

12:21

going forward. So that five

12:23

nights and twenty four, almost all

12:25

Asians were banned from coming into

12:27

the country. And they were

12:30

restrictions against other nationalities as

12:32

wow. Can you talk

12:34

about how that affected your family? Specifically

12:37

the suit? My grandfather and father's side

12:39

I never met. Remember I mention that

12:41

I was raised by single mother and

12:43

I was completely a strange from my

12:46

dad's side of the family. See what?

12:48

I was shocked to learn that my

12:50

chin grandfather. Was seven years

12:53

old before he met his father

12:55

for the first time and that

12:57

was a direct result of Chinese

13:00

exclusion. Chinese exclusion made. It very

13:02

difficult for people to come and. Go

13:04

even if you are merchant and

13:06

had keepers. He was

13:08

still never guaranteed if you could come

13:11

back into the last. What happened is

13:13

that it was very difficult to bring

13:15

lives over and to bring Chinese women

13:18

over. So what happened is the father

13:20

lives in the last and went back

13:22

to China to the villages and. See.

13:25

And assad their families their mean if

13:27

they would stay for a year and

13:29

then they would have to go. So

13:31

in the case of my grandfather he

13:33

did not meet his father and so

13:35

he was seven years old and so

13:37

he was yearning to know his father

13:39

and the same way about i was

13:41

on and so even though it was

13:44

difference in the and he he gets

13:46

him in his father and I than

13:48

me of my father until I was

13:50

twenty seven. the We which Chinese exclusion

13:52

impacted families on the grounds. Really

13:54

was eye opening to me and

13:57

and. Allowed me to see the

13:59

ways and. My father had lived

14:01

his life. He has being

14:03

a kind of i'm an

14:05

Echo or resonance. Of

14:08

the original Chinese exclusion. Is.

14:11

That help you to understand. Him

14:14

and your estrangement. From. Him.

14:16

Or maybe his ability to do that. I'm.

14:18

I think it really helped me that

14:20

understands. In. A way.

14:24

How difficult it was for Chinese

14:26

man in this country for so

14:29

many generations. And

14:32

that may be. While

14:35

I don't wanna excuse their

14:37

behavior, like behavior of my

14:39

great grandfather was rather abusive

14:41

to his wife. you know,

14:44

My own father has had

14:46

difficulties with his romantic relationships.

14:49

Among I don't want no excuse

14:51

that kind of behavior. Am

14:53

I think that I have a

14:55

greater understanding that if you grow

14:58

up and within the community of

15:00

of. Seeing yourself in a certain

15:02

way and then you will outside

15:04

of the community and you have

15:06

to face different. You know, prejudice,

15:09

soul viewpoints. Me know you can't

15:11

get better jobs. You know for

15:13

the longest time Chinese people could not

15:15

become naturalized and what that man's is

15:18

that you. Were excluded from entering

15:20

certain professions. You couldn't become a

15:22

lawyer. or you could become a

15:24

doctor. You, cynthia. Judge it's a

15:26

not be a politician and so.

15:29

Have you know. I

15:31

have family members. Who lived here for

15:34

most of their lives, who were

15:36

never able to naturalize and and

15:38

back As and pants on people

15:40

you know, What do you

15:42

do with that? understanding? I. Think

15:44

that. Is helps me

15:47

to be less angry and

15:49

resentful towards. Someone. Like

15:51

my father I am. You know, even my

15:53

grandfather had a temper. The one who raised

15:56

me had a temper. But when I think

15:58

about the things that he had. Go

16:00

through, you know? living life in

16:02

this country under an alias arm,

16:05

never feeling like he was

16:07

one hundred percent unsteady. ground there

16:09

any moment. He could have

16:11

been deported. Slam. That's a

16:13

really impact how you live,

16:16

how you treat other people.

16:18

In the people that you laws and

16:20

also as and tax on your how

16:22

you know. Silly. I think it makes

16:25

me more empathetic towards folks that I'm

16:27

in my family that. Before this

16:29

I may be have a hard time

16:31

for giving them. Coming

16:36

up more stories from month Street,

16:39

they lived in our building in

16:41

nineteen eighteen when the flu pandemic

16:44

was ramp and they had survived

16:46

Colorado and diphtheria and you know

16:48

that the various lose stay with

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Sarah Levy shares Better Months philosophy

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To learn more go to

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cancer.org. Laurie

18:12

Parker, Code Switch. Laurie's

18:15

been talking to Ava Chin, the

18:18

author of Mott Street, a Chinese-American

18:20

family story of exclusion and homecoming.

18:23

Throughout the book, Ava traces the stories

18:25

of horrible acts of violence and

18:27

discrimination. There's one that stuck

18:29

with me about cue cutting, the significance

18:31

of which I learned reading this book.

18:34

Ava cites an editorial from 1885 that

18:37

really sets the tone for the kind

18:39

of anger and prejudice that was happening

18:41

against Chinese people in America at that

18:43

time. That November, the

18:45

Truckee Republican published a brisk

18:48

editorial for cue cutting, hacking

18:50

up the long-breed Chinese men war,

18:52

a sure cure for the

18:55

Chinese pestilence. It suggested

18:57

a reward system and a

18:59

kind of display or trophying,

19:02

as is the case with pelts of

19:04

wolves, coyotes, and like vermin when they

19:06

become a pest. Every

19:09

time I read this article from the safety

19:11

of my studio, it makes my breath catch.

19:14

They thought of us as animals. Of

19:18

all the stories Ava details, it

19:21

isn't the cruelest or the most violent, but

19:25

for me it's the most personal because

19:27

of the connection I have to my grandma's hair,

19:29

specifically her braid. When

19:32

she was a few years older than me, she wanted to

19:34

cut off her long hair and my

19:36

grandpa loved her hair. So

19:39

it became a tradition that before she cut it

19:41

short, she put it in a braid for him

19:43

to keep. And for us, now

19:46

45 years later, to have that piece of

19:48

her youth forever is

19:51

one of my greatest prides that the

19:53

color of my hair matches the color

19:55

of my mama's hair identically. There

19:58

was something about reading the violation

20:00

of that, something that

20:03

has been so significant for me to

20:05

have from my grandma that was

20:07

just cut off and

20:09

taken without regard. It hurt

20:12

so much to

20:14

read about. Were there stories

20:17

like that that you found that struck

20:19

you while writing the book? That is

20:21

one example of many. And

20:26

so other ones were the

20:29

wife of a merchant who my family

20:31

did know who

20:33

got pushed out of her home in

20:36

Seattle, Washington in

20:38

the 1880s when she was

20:40

in her third trimester of

20:42

pregnancy. The things

20:44

that she experienced were so horrific

20:46

and it really broke my heart.

20:48

There of course were other stories

20:50

about our railroad builder who was

20:53

happily living in Boise, Idaho for

20:55

another two and a half decades after

20:58

he helped finish the railroad, did

21:00

not want to leave. But when the

21:02

tides turned against us and his neighbors

21:04

pushed him out and

21:07

that was really heartbreaking too. After

21:09

almost three decades of living in America,

21:12

Yuan Sun heard an angry knock at his

21:14

front door. When he opened it,

21:16

he confronted a mob of his white

21:19

neighbors yelling, the Chinese must go. Some

21:22

didn't even bother to mask themselves as they

21:24

drove him out of the home he had

21:26

been living in for decades. That

21:28

was a story that my grandfather did not

21:31

tell me until I was a little bit

21:33

older. He parsed out the story

21:35

because he wanted me to

21:37

feel the pride that he felt in the

21:39

railroad, that the family felt about the railroad.

21:42

He told me later about being pushed

21:45

out only when I was a little bit

21:47

older and old enough to stomach

21:50

the tale. He still

21:52

had great pride in the railroad that

21:54

he worked on. So

21:56

there's a lot of that in the book. I

21:59

feel like One of the

22:01

things I really learned was that you

22:04

have to hold space in your heart for

22:06

both the difficult moments

22:08

as well as the

22:10

happy moments or the stories of

22:12

resilience. And oftentimes, I would

22:15

feel both things at the same time.

22:18

Do you find that significant

22:20

to think about how much resilience

22:24

your family would have to have, your grandpa would have

22:26

to have, to be able to push out what could

22:28

be very well just anger,

22:30

just resentment, but with still a

22:33

lot of pride? Yeah,

22:35

yeah. I mean, I think during

22:38

this period of anti-Asian

22:40

scapegoating, I have really

22:42

felt quite a lot

22:46

of comfort from the fact

22:48

that my family members survived

22:50

what happened to them. The

22:53

other thing too was that in

22:55

that period that I'm writing about where my

22:58

great grandmothers land in

23:00

our building as upstairs, downstairs neighbors

23:02

from each other. Yeah, yeah. They lived

23:05

during a period in time in which the

23:07

plague was rampant in Hong Kong and they

23:10

survived. They lived in our building

23:12

in 1918 when the flu pandemic

23:15

was rampant and killed a lot

23:17

of people. So they had survived

23:19

cholera and diphtheria

23:22

and various

23:24

flus. Not

23:27

all of their children did survive,

23:29

but these women were brave

23:31

and intrepid. The

23:33

reason why we're here today, you know. It's

23:36

sort of a miracle when you're listing it

23:38

all out like that to be able to

23:40

survive it all. Well, I

23:42

really drew comfort from that in

23:44

the earliest days of the pandemic.

23:46

I was like, if my great

23:48

grandmothers can survive all of this,

23:51

we can survive this pandemic too.

23:53

Oh my goodness. It's

23:56

truly comforting to be able to call

23:58

on that, on what you know. The

24:00

history of Brazilians within your family

24:02

and within the women in your

24:04

family's. I'm

24:10

I'm curious. Christianity.

24:13

Is. Also a very. Large

24:15

presence. He's hear your opinion and

24:17

your reactions to a lot of

24:19

things while they're reading. I'm. You

24:22

don't seem to necessarily give us quite

24:24

as colored of a reaction to this.

24:27

The. Evangelize and assertively happened throughout this

24:29

book from I'm serious out of the

24:31

say that play into the story. Yeah.

24:34

So so I should say

24:36

one side and my family were

24:39

considered progressive christians in that period

24:41

of of christian progress and

24:43

new. The of I can't

24:45

even pronounce that they were

24:47

was very progressive to be a

24:49

christian and that time. Period

24:52

right? They really believed him

24:54

self improve. Mans and and one

24:56

side of my family. Really? Sod on

24:59

these vices that Chinese manning's

25:01

age stanley gambling like our

25:03

opium smoking on the really

25:05

like tried to stay away

25:07

from now that they actively

25:09

tried to shut down the

25:11

gambling parlor in which he

25:13

lied about. yeah yeah. So

25:16

there's once as a family that way. The other side

25:18

of the family were the ones who. Had. Their

25:20

fingers in every single pies of our

25:22

devices. and we're getting. Kickbacks and says

25:24

so and so They were both and

25:27

so I felt like I really needed

25:29

to try to under sample size of

25:31

the families you are you going to

25:33

bring up gambling. right? So I

25:36

am the granddaughter and the

25:38

daughter of some very heavy

25:40

gamblers re new at gambling

25:42

addictions and so I myself

25:44

don't gamble all I had.

25:46

I think it's a gamble

25:48

enough to be a writer,

25:50

right? Right side

25:52

with your lives right or without having a

25:54

gamble Way my money as your and so

25:56

is like one son of a family was

25:58

like really and side game. It was

26:00

like trying to root out that vice in Chinatown

26:03

But then you also have this like

26:05

this bachelor community that's been created Because

26:09

of the Chinese exclusion act laws

26:11

and they're living here without you

26:13

know, they're women folks Yeah, I

26:15

know Jim. They have nothing else

26:17

to do I'm

26:19

so I kind of felt like well, you

26:21

know, and I myself don't gamble but I

26:23

can't be so like Anti-gambling

26:25

with them, you know, it's a

26:28

nonfiction book. There's only So

26:31

much I can know about my family

26:33

members, you know who long died before I

26:35

was born But I

26:37

wanted to make sure that

26:40

all sides all religions and

26:43

particularly because you know one side of my family

26:45

were Practically

26:47

missionaries, you know, yeah within the

26:50

community that I I just that

26:52

I honored and respected that even

26:54

though I myself, you know and other

26:56

family members would be like, yeah,

26:59

okay You know, do you do

27:01

you feel like in any way that the

27:03

transition to Christianity played a part

27:05

in the assimilation? That was also happening. Oh,

27:07

yeah. Yeah, definitely So

27:10

that side of the family were the

27:12

first families in Chinatown to

27:14

speak English at home So

27:16

that meant that there's their kids did better in the

27:19

daytime school that they went to in fact

27:21

Actually the the missionaries in Chinatown

27:23

they offered free language classes

27:26

as a way to you know Convert

27:28

and proselytize. Yeah, my family

27:31

were Christian in China before they

27:33

got here And so those

27:35

family members were really eager to be

27:38

here so that they get a Christian education Yeah,

27:41

and then like my great-grandfather on

27:43

his prep school application wrote like what do

27:45

you want your future occupation to be? And

27:48

he was like missionary I

27:54

Think that being Christian in America really

27:56

helped them enormously in terms of

27:58

working outside of the community community.

28:00

Whereas I can say that the other family

28:03

members who did not have that bent really

28:06

stayed within the community. Also, they didn't have

28:08

the language skills. So it was

28:10

sort of a combination of

28:13

different things that

28:17

held them back. And it's hard to

28:19

say, well, was it the English? Was

28:21

it not really going to church or

28:23

not being a belief? And not

28:26

having those Christian networks, like

28:28

what was it? But

28:30

certainly the Christian Chinese

28:33

networks definitely helped one

28:35

side of my family over the other.

28:38

A part of reading this book that we

28:41

are made aware of really, really quickly is

28:43

how we are sort of

28:45

invited on this journey with you. And you

28:47

are very much narrating and navigating us through

28:50

it, sort of giving us these reactions to

28:52

what's happening decades and

28:54

decades and decades ago. I mean, you

28:56

are like aware of what's going to

28:58

happen next because you're

29:01

the one who is writing and researching

29:03

this. And yet in real time, you're

29:05

really articulating what

29:07

we're sort of feeling with you. And

29:09

it does feel like an invitation to

29:11

go with you on the journey.

29:13

That is your story. I'm so glad

29:15

that you say that because in the very

29:18

beginning, I had this idea that this

29:20

story was all their stories,

29:22

right? I wanted to write

29:25

it in a more distant omniscient,

29:28

their person point of

29:30

view. But as

29:32

I continue to do the research, I

29:34

realize that a lot of newspaper

29:37

articles that I was reading from the

29:39

19th century were really infused

29:42

with the kind of prejudicial

29:44

viewpoints of the day that

29:46

were very common. But

29:49

as a contemporary person

29:53

living today reading this and

29:55

knowing that my family members are living not

29:57

too far away, really

30:00

painful and difficult for me. It

30:03

all personal, it wasn't something that I was

30:05

writing about some other community. This

30:07

was my community and my family.

30:10

And so there would be moments where I really

30:12

did feel like I got, you know, socked in

30:14

the stomach. And I would like have to hobble

30:17

away from the desk and like, you know, deal

30:19

with it the next day. And

30:21

I realized that knowing

30:23

that the National Archives files

30:27

were filled with so much fiction, allowed

30:29

me to give space to the

30:32

oral stories and the family stories.

30:35

And what I realized, one of the things I needed

30:38

to do was I

30:40

needed to bring myself into there

30:42

too, as

30:44

a way for the reader to

30:46

understand and make sense of this all.

30:49

I love, love, love that you came to that

30:52

conclusion. We

30:55

feel punched in the stomach as the reader.

30:57

I felt that with you. And it isn't

30:59

my family. I can only imagine how much

31:01

you felt that because it is personal, it

31:04

is your family's story. Yeah, yeah. And, you

31:06

know, it really was incredibly meaningful for me.

31:09

You know, doing the research on the family

31:12

members, I feel like I'm closer to

31:14

them. I'm closer to the grandfather

31:16

that I never met, to,

31:18

you know, the great grandparents that I

31:21

never met too. I just, you know,

31:23

I know so much more about the

31:25

family and I know so much more

31:27

about this legacy of what it means

31:29

to be Chinese in America or what

31:31

it means to be an Asian American.

31:34

I feel like I've gotten a real

31:36

gift, but there's also a way

31:39

in which, now that I'm a mother

31:41

myself, I still sit with the young

31:43

person, the child that was me, yearning

31:46

to understand who these people were.

31:49

And now I do, but I have

31:51

an even deeper sense because I understand

31:54

what was happening in our country

31:56

at the time. In ways that

31:58

even they didn't. understand it. What

32:01

do you want your daughter to get out

32:03

of all of these lessons learned and all

32:06

of these stories? I want

32:08

her to be able to know

32:10

what her heritage is, what

32:13

the obstacles were that her ancestors

32:15

faced here, and I want

32:17

her to understand like who she

32:19

is as an American child

32:22

and then she grows into you know

32:24

an Asian American woman. I want

32:27

her to have that very solid

32:29

foundation that I

32:31

didn't have when I was growing up as

32:33

a kid. I felt like I was just

32:35

like kind of you know making my way

32:38

through the dark and just going by gut

32:40

instinct. She has the benefit

32:42

of this narrative. That

32:45

was Ava Chin, the author of

32:47

Mott Street, a Chinese-American family story

32:49

of exclusion and homecoming. Thank you

32:51

so much for talking with us Ava, this has

32:54

been such a pleasure. It was a pleasure

32:56

to be here with you. And

33:00

that's our show. Thanks so much

33:02

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33:42

This episode was produced by Jess Kung. It

33:44

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33:46

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to the rest of the Code Switch Massive.

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