Huey-Min Chuang and Mei-Yi Chen
Recorded
July 14, 2023
Archived
July 14, 2023
49:15 minutes
0:00 / 0:00
Id:
ddc002620
Description
Recently reconnected friends Huey-Min Chuang [no age given] and Mei-Yi Chen (51) share their childhood immigration and coming-of-age stories and what home means to them. They also talk about their current projects and what they hope for in their rekindled friendship.Subject Log / Time Code
Participants talk about how they were reconnected after 30 years.
Mei-Yi (M) talks about what home means to her. She talks about her early years living in Vietnam with her Chinese parents, and eventually needing to flee on a boat to Hong Kong.
M talks about living in refugee camps in Hong Kong and how she and her family eventually migrated to Virginia.
Huey-Min (H) talks about moving from Taiwan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her parents move back to Taiwan to make money, leaving H (who was 10 years old) and her siblings alone in Argentina.
H recalls starting a business with her mother at 12 years old, and ultimately becoming the business owner and landlord at 13. She is then moved to Providence, RI by her parents.
H shares that she once told her mother that these conditions were hard, and shortly after, her mother died. H shares what she appreciated about her mother and what gave her a sense of home.
M discusses the role reversal that happens sometimes in households with refugee families.
H talks about how and why she became a painter and what it has brought to her life.
M discusses what home means to her and how it is not necessarily tied to a specific place.
Participants share what they want for their relationship to each other and how it has been a gift to be reconnected.
Participants
- Huey-Min Chuang
- Mei-Yi Chen