Page 13 - Solstice Art & Literary Magazine 2020

LAKE AT DUSK • ALEX JIANG
Soft & Hard Pastel • Scholastic Art & Writing Awards: Silver Key
ON ROOTS
STELLA DANG
The day after I came out, the sunset was pink, purple, and blue.
My parents worried that I was forgetting my roots. They feared that I had strayed from the people and places of my origin.
Throughout the generations, we have been a family of migrants, and at times our roots were the only bond that tied us to- gether. Now, tentatively, my parents began relating the cherished stories again.
My grandmother was born to two expats who came back to China during World War II, only to be persecuted by the communist regime. At age seven, my grandmother became an orphan. Before she finished high school, she was sent to
a work camp herself, where she met my grandfather. It was the western frontier- land with steaming sand dunes in the summer, thigh-deep snow in the winter, and the Himalayas always on the horizon. During the day, my grandparents farmed with the other displaced students; at night, they secretly pursued their education under a kerosene lamp. After more than
a decade, they toiled and bribed their way
back home, where their children might lead easier lives.
If not for the Cultural Revolution, my grandmother likes to say, she would have been raised a young lady of a great house. As a child, my mother was sick of such talk. She felt the desert in her, and the city too. Strong-willed since her youth, my mother faced poverty head-on with pride. At age nineteen, she got a job at a construction com- pany and became the bread-winner of her household. My father was born in
a mountain village in the Northwest. After seeing a city for the first time, he knew where his life would take him. He was the first in a long line of family to go to school in Beijing, and he was the first in the family to change his destiny through education.
Less than a decade ago, my parents decided to immigrate to the U.S. for a better future. Here we are, across the Pacific, on the third leg of our great journey east. I often joke that next, I’ll be going to Mars.
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