Photo and oral history archive of Asian American life in Parsippany, New Jersey,
photographed for The Parsippany-Troy Hills Library in collaboration with CoLab Arts.
photographed for The Parsippany-Troy Hills Library in collaboration with CoLab Arts.
“He came as, what is referred to, as a paper son. Both my parents are from China. From the same region of China. And, in 1882 the United States enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was actually the first ever immigration law passed in the United States. It limited the number of Chinese who could come into the country to fifty a year and to merchants only. All paper sons are illegal, they came into the country under false pretenses. And it’s a part of our family history that we did not talk about, except among ourselves. But it has arisen over the past ten years or so and it really brought to the forefront my father coming here as an illegal immigrant and how, you know, we wouldn’t be here if we, if he hadn’t come here, we wouldn’t have had the opportunities that we’ve had. And you know, I think my family is a very successful immigrant story. And I think there are many undocumented immigrants who came here for the same reasons my father came here and who can become very successful contributors to our society and are looking for opportunities to do well and especially to give their children a better life than they themselves had had. And so, I started speaking up a lot more about my father’s history when immigration became an issue just to let people know that, that there is a bright, positive side to opening up our borders and that our country can be better.”
“I do a lot of things that would give me some sense of purpose. I do a lot of volunteering, I belong to a church called Every Nation New Jersey. I do some slides for our pastors. I organize the women’s brunch. And then personally I am building this website for myself and also doing some drawings and illustration. The name is “The Courage to Age”. I don’t consider myself as a “Mommy Blogger”, it’s more of my journey as a woman transitioning from 20s, 30s, to 40s into 50s. So, I see myself as doing that. I do a lot of gardening as well. Yeah. So, there’s a community garden here in Parsippany. I have my own 10 by 10 foot of patch, organic farming. We’re now in the second stage of our green card processing. May take around, maybe another year or two, for us to get our permanent residency and that’s why I’m still waiting for that authorization to fall through. So, yeah, it’s, it’s a long process.
You just have to be patient, I guess.”