In an unmarked manila envelope that smells of mildew, I discover letters from opposite sides of my family’s Chinese-American divide. One is from my paternal great-grandfather W. Herbert Trescott, the other from my grandfather Liu Chengyu. These two consolation notes are emblematic of the divisions within families that so often occur as a result of what I’ve come to call migration estrangement.
Especially in the last century, when one generation set sail for a foreign country, many lost forever the family members left behind. In my family, this estrangement began even before geographic migration, with the crossing of cultural boundaries.