Lilo Kuo
Seminar 2 Peopleing of New York
Family Immigration Story
My grandfather came to the U.S. almost thirty years ago. The pattern for most Chinese families is to have one family member immigrate to the states (usually male family member who has better luck obtaining a job), saves up enough money to send back home and then petition for the rest of the family. My grandmother followed soon after. For their first 5 years in the U.S., my grandparents lived in Chinatown; I suppose it was because of convenience. My aunt and uncle where the next to join them, and by this point, my grandparents had moved into a Sunnyside Queens apartment. When I came to the U.S. in 2004 from Taiwan, my family was still living in that small apartment. My cousin and I made many friends in that building (he was 4 and I was 8), we would play tag up and down the stairs during sunny afternoons in the dumbbell shaped tenement. The hallways always smelled a mélange of Indian, Spanish, and Chinese dinners, and it was wonderful. Eventually my family saved enough money to purchase a house in Maspeth Elmhurst. What was interesting is that when my cousin and I contacted the friends we had made from our childhood, they all had also moved to a house and no longer live at that building. In a sense Sunnyside for us was the rest stop for my family’s journey in the U.S., and also for the many other families in that building. Purchasing a new house was a big deal for my family; it symbolized their survival in the new country.
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