I knew nothing about this book but its cover caught my eye on the NPR Best Of list and then I noticed it was available on Everand, so I picked it up - and it was a beautiful find! I read it by accident at the same time as Takeaway by Angela Hui, and though they're very different, both deal with the distance felt between the children of Chinese immigrants and their parents, and also both deal with a daughter coping with her mother's sudden illness (though one is set in Canada and one in the Welsh valleys). This graphic novel is quite simply drawn, but it's effective. I particularly liked the panels which were somewhat repetitive (such as when Teresa was going back and forth to piano lessons) - they held a great sense of melancholy which I loved.

That melancholy tone permeates the entire memoir, especially the parts about her mother's illness, and the parts about her ancestors journey to Canada and Canada's treatment of Chinese immigrants once they finished building the railways. I also had no idea that people swam to Hong Kong to escape Chinese communes.

Would recommend to anyone interested in diasporic communities and the divide in communication between immigrant parents and their children.