My mother’s Chinese-Caribbean ancestors were indentured workers in Trinidad and Guyana, They were called ‘coolies.’ I lived with My Chinese grandmother in Chinatown during school breaks. I prayed with her in the buddhist temple on canal street. She taught me how to cook, play mahjang, read palms and faces. Grandmother was ‘Hakka.’ That’s why she did not speak the same dialect as her firends,she said. I remember many family reunions after the law changed. I discovered our immigration records at the National Archives.I honor my family in my film “From Shanghai to Harlem.”
