yee pau’s story

My great aunt died in the summer of 2009. I called her Yee Pau, which is similar to “second grandmother” “auntie” in Cantonese.

In sorting through her things, I came upon an extraordinary document, in the form of a worn, wrinkled sheet of notebook paper. It was my great aunt’s study sheet for her U.S. citizenship exam.

It tells her story — that she was a sewing worker, that she came from China, that she had a husband who died — and it doesn’t, because that’s just the official version of her story, and like many immigrants, the official story isn’t the true story at all. Even her listed birth date is inaccurate.

The paper has four kinds of writing on it: typewritten questions and answers, corrections in pencil, simplified Chinese translations, and phonetic translations of the sentences in squiggly Chinese characters. The latter was written by Yee Pau, because she didn’t actually speak English beyond “hello” and “thank you” and other niceties.

I started duplicating phrases from the document, embroidering them by hand on cloth.

In the act of embroidering these characters that I can’t read, I feel like I’m in conversation with my great aunt, who spoke a dialect I couldn’t understand. We couldn’t communicate well in life, but in this process, I, too, can be a sewing worker. This is a work in progress, to be presented with images of Yee Pau’s belongings and more of her story (official and otherwise).

yee pau’s story (work in progress), 2010.
Embroidery thread, cloth.