let the big city sweep you away.

being separated from family for a decade is not something I personally experienced, but my father did go through it, and he never really spoke about it with me (he still has not). 

my dad left Hong Kong at 19 in 1969 to come to the US for college, following his cousin over here. Sometime between then and the 80s, his father passed away from cancer; he didn’t go back for the funeral or anything - if he did, it wouldn’t have been easy for him to return to the US. Sometime in the 80s, his mother also found out she had cancer, and decided it was important to see her son one more time before she died. She came with my aunt (my dad’s sister) to visit him here in Chicago. I have some photos from that visit I think. She passed away not long after her return to Hong Kong. 

My father missed the deaths of both of his parents because he couldn’t leave work here, and he couldn’t risk not being able to come back to the US, where he made his entire life. 

So many of our immigrant parents left their parents, their homes, their languages, their cultures, friends, neighborhoods, senses of familiarity to come to this stupid country, that has exploited their labor, and trapped them. My father assimilated very willingly. His English is just as American as mine - I may have been born into it, but he grew up with it too, and has been speaking it longer than I likely ever will have. 

this was the country of their dreams, and for so many of them and us it became a nightmare. we who grew up in it became privy to genocide and slavery upon which this country was founded.