The truth isn’t easy to tell.
I’ve always avoided taking photographs of my family because it hurts.
When I was in college, my teachers would always tell me how wonderful it would be if they could see more pictures of my own family in addition to the photographs I was making of other people. I would always laugh uncomfortably and tell them that my family is extremely difficult to photograph. It’s a mixture of things; my family isn’t perfect, the women in my family are unhealthily concerned about their appearance, and I don’t feel inspired to photograph my family, I feel scared. Photographing my family tells my truth, and it’s a way to accept and memorialize it.
I’ve been distancing myself from my family for as long as I can remember. I have always felt different and like I don’t belong, but in 2022 I decided to take the leap to move out of my parents house after Christmas. I was tired of hiding in my room everyday, and hearing my mom complain about why I didn’t come out. I couldn’t stand to look at my father anymore after learning almost twenty years later what he had done to my parent’s marriage when I was a child. I felt disgusted and betrayed, but I felt guilty leaving my mom alone in the house with him. I couldn’t admit that my family was hurting me to their faces, rather than lifting me up, so I left. After, I began to soar. I lived with two girls my age in Fox Point in Providence in a modest apartment. I commuted to Boston for school by car Junior year, and train senior year, at 7am a few days a week. I did very well in my classes, and saved up a ton of money from various photography jobs. I felt so much more like a person when I was outside of my parents’ house. I felt like I wasn’t hiding anymore, but deep down, I was still running from my family’s issues. I was struggling behind my smiles and accomplishments with deep-rooted trauma from my personal and family life. At twenty-two, against my will, I suddenly became aware that there was a facade my family put forward, and it was finally falling apart.
After coming to Rochester, I have suddenly become conscious of the other side— my mom’s side. Now as an adult, after seeing how depressed my grandmother is, being 6 hours away from my mom, I have started to comprehend and take on my mother’s guilt and depression. It is difficult to talk about the sacrifice you make as a woman when you leave your mother to give yourself a better life.
It made my mom feel like she ran away, and I feel like the guilt she carries can be attributed to the fact that she spent her early childhood in Cambodia and the later half in America. She grew up with a mother that instilled the eastern values of family; how family must come first, provide for one another, and brush dirt underneath the rug for the sake of our family’s image. Here, she grew up realizing (as did I) that family means everything to an extent in western culture, which is much more focused on the individual. The weight we carry as immigrant daughters to live up to the expectations and pressures of our mothers, and put our own wellbeing aside, is something I dread but understand. In April, while reading my mom’s memoir, I wrote to myself: “why is being an immigrant daughter always a battle of fighting for mom’s approval? Why must we endure the cycle of hurting our daughters with what hurt ourselves?” Everyday I was at Butler, I thought of my mother, and how I wish she was in the chair taking care of herself, not me. I wished she would seek therapy, and at least try to understand it. I know that we cannot force a mentally ill person to want to help themselves, otherwise it won’t help because they need to want it, but I can’t help but wish that she would talk to someone. How better of a world would it be, if our mothers and fathers sought help? If they turned to a therapist and not just distractions, substances or medication to feel better? I wonder what kind of a person I would be, if my mother wanted and accepted help.
Today I took my grandma to the Highland Park Conservatory, where my grandma and I looked at many species of plants and flowers. We played with all sorts of quails, tortoises, turtles, and moths. I was so happy to see her enjoying herself. She rarely takes the twenty minute drive to the city because she thinks gas is expensive, and had never come to the botanical garden before despite her fondness for gardening. I could feel the child within her in the room with us, and I could feel her relax and be more like herself now that she was outside of the house. Her home in Hilton sucks the life out of you. In Highland Park, I saw a side of her I hadn’t before. A playful side, full of excitement about botany and animals. She pointed out which flowers reminded her of Cambodia, and that’s why I took her there. Inspired by Hmong photographer Pao Her’s photographs of Lao elders in various garden scenes, I wanted to bring my grandma to a place that would feel like Cambodia because of its temperature and scenery. I was pleased to hear that she enjoyed herself, and she told me that she enjoyed playing with all the different quails. She walked more than she ever had in a long time, and she was excited to point out the plants and flowers that she knew the names of, or had at home.
When we went back to Hilton, she turned into a different person. She walked slower, hung lower, and was more agitated. She had many chores to do, like cooking dinner, cleaning up the yard, and taking out the trash. Meanwhile, Mike sat on the couch watching Korean dramas on Netflix. Not to be funny in a bad situation, but when a stereotypical Trump-supporting American white man decides to watch K-dramas, that’s how you know he watches TV so much that he ran out of options.
I feel so torn about the relationships between Mike and Simone and my mom and my dad. I know that the men are no good for the women, but I feel sad to entertain the idea of them separating. After the chores were done, Simone kept muttering “one more day.” Eventually Mike and I asked why, and she turned to him and made a funny gesture to her brain, explaining, “it’s just me thinking.” He laughed in a way that implied to me that he thinks she’s crazy. Then my grandma turned away from him, walked to the kitchen, and said her truth. As she shuffled about, she muttered, ‘it’s one more day to live.” I told her to not say things like that, and rushed to my room to tell my boyfriend Cole and friend Meghan. Meghan made me feel better when she told me that her grandma “says the same shit.” I guess of course all old people say weird morbid things like that, but I can’t help but be taken back by old people and their outlook on death. I know one day I will understand, but for now, I don’t know what to think.
With all honesty, being here has been confusing. As my South Korean friend and mentor, Sinden explains, “expectations versus reality” is a tough thing to navigate as an artist and a daughter/granddaughter. I came here with the intent to make a huge project about all these things college influenced me to do that I couldn’t force. Eventually, today, I realized that I had to tell the truth and present what I wanted, to trust the process. I had a similar experience while making my last project, where I had trouble focusing until I began making the pictures I wanted to. I understand now that I just need to make pictures and take everything as it is. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but maybe what these pictures will say will mean something to someone else. My Burmese friend Filbert told me that what I am doing here “is incredibly heavy and a lot to carry” but it gave me the strength I needed to understand the importance of these photographs to my community and to try to stay here longer.
If not a big project, a little one that explores mental illness in the Southeast Asian community. As my mom described to me once, “you win some and lose some” coming to the U.S. as a refugee or an immigrant. You leave what you once knew to fall into the arms of a stranger, but for many it seems, the arms are not as golden as they were described to you. America is a terrible place, but I don’t know (and neither do they) if home is really better. After such a terrible past few days here, struggling to realize what any of these pictures even mean, I realize now what Gloria Steinem meant when she said that “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
