Sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, with support and partnership from UBC Community Partners for Learning (CPL), ExplorAsian, the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia (CCHSBC), and the North American Association of Asian Professionals (NAAAP), and the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society (VAHMS), the IKBLC welcomes Judy Fong-Bates on May 28th 5-7pm, as she reads from her much anticipated Year of Finding Memory. An elegant and surprising book about a Chinese family’s difficult arrival in Canada, and a daughter’s search to understand remarkable and terrible truths about her parents’ past lives.
Growing up in her father’s hand laundry in small town Ontario, Judy Fong Bates listened to stories of her parents’ past lives in China, a place far removed from their every-day life of poverty and misery. But in spite of the allure of these stories, Fong Bates longed to be a Canadian girl. Fifty years later she finally followed her curiosity back to her ancestral home in China for a reunion that spiralled into a series of unanticipated discoveries. Opening with a shock as moving as the one that powers The Glass Castle, The Year of Finding Memory explores a particular, yet universal, world of family secrets, love, loss, courage and shame. This is a memoir of a daughter’s emotional journey, and her painful acceptance of conflicting truths. In telling the story of her parents, Fong Bates is telling the story of how she came to know them, of finding memory.
As Fong-Bates recalls,
In the fall of 2006, years after my parents had died, I returned to China for the first time since my arrival in 1955 with my mother to join my father at his hand laundry in Allandale. What started out as a family reunion spiralled into a series of unanticipated discoveries. I ended up returning for a second time the following fall. What I learned from those visits changed everything I thought I knew about my parents. From my point of view they were typical, hard-working, albeit unhappy immigrants. My discoveries in China led me to a deeper understanding of my family and ultimately myself. The result is my memoir, The Year of Finding Memory.
As part of a series of events in Canada in honour of Asian Heritage Month, come join us as Fong-Bates will read at the Lillooet Room (301) at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre followed by a tour of the IKBLC Gallery’s ‘Generation One’ exhibition featuring art work from across the generations of Asian Canadians. For directions, please visit our online map.
