By Connie Huang Mom and me after dinner. Zip-ties loop and fasten snug with teeth gnawing in one direction, irreversible, clenching the stiff long tongue’s gaping tracks. That’s how tightly motherhood wrapped Mom’s bones lined her womb squeezed her palm. She gave birth to a new role, an immigrant’s handcrafting- seamstress- as she sweat[shopp]ed out […]
Category
Mother of All Stories
A Chinese Teenager’s Letter to Her Mother in America
By Tina Sue Yip The author (aged 13 and living in China at the time) drew this picture for her then-5-year-old sister who was living in the United States with the parents. Dear Mother, Do you know what it feels like waiting for your monthly letters these past three years? Whenever I hear the […]
The Name Poem
By Wei Ming Dariotis Sally Gin (nee Chan Shun Fan) and Wei Ming Dariotis at the Japantown Peace Plaza, circa 1974 © Bob Knickerbocker I. I feel conflicted only sometimes when someone asks me what my name means I’d like to wait a little while before skinning myself, that way in Earthsea the wizards know […]
To Remember Her
By Jean Okamoto The author’s mother’s hands. My mother hated udon. She said it was because of the gluten that gave her headaches, but it was really because it was Japanese. It used to be her very favorite food. She would beg Bachan to make it when she was growing up. But after Pearl Harbor, […]
Leaving Pusan
By Kira Donnell The author and her birthmother. I think I am always destined to leave this city with a sense of loss. This is the third time I have left the city of my birth, but the first time I have left with a proper goodbye to my mother, and a promise to return. […]
Podiatry
By Kira Donnell My sister, mother, and me walking barefoot along the beach in Ulsan. My Korean mother, sister, and I walk along the beach in their coastal hometown of Ulsan, and it reminds me of summer afternoons beachcombing the shores of Lake Michigan with my American mother and sister. I am struck by the […]
My Mother Wanted More
By Van Anh Tran The first time Van Anh’s mother held her, 1991. My mother wanted more. In the spring of 1975, she had a loving husband and three children. But, they were living in a war-torn country, a shattered existence, with an uncertain future. My mother wanted more. She decided she would get out, […]
Too Bad
By Shizue Seigel My mother and me in 1960 beneath Japanese prints of Bunraku puppet-heads. Mom hid inside her immaculate house because she was hazukashii, terrified of embarrassment and humiliation. She limited her world to her house, her secretarial job, and her family–my dad, who was seldom present even when he was home, and me, […]
The Sweet Life
By Misa Shikuma Me and Mom circa 1993. “What did your mom cook at home?” Cognizant of my Chinese American heritage, many expect me to wax nostalgic about stir fries, rice dishes and dumplings, yet what I remember most about my mom’s home cooking are baked goods: cookies with centers oozing with chocolate that my […]
Sapphires
By Irene Van That moment when the author is trying really hard to impress her mom with lipstick and her hair done. The lipstick disappeared after she dug into her dinner. Shrugs. mẹ ơiyou taught me that a woman’s beauty did not come fromthe depth of her laughterthe mountains that she carries on her backor […]
