25
the algonqu in r eader • vol ume 6 • issue 1
A Better Life
— an essay by —
lisa ko
I had been working on my first novel, The Leavers, for a little over a year
when I cashed in a decade’s worth of airline miles and flew from New
York City to Fuzhou, China. I checked into a hotel and spent a week wan-
dering the city by myself, hoping to spark some insight into my characters.
I’m ethnically Chinese but have zero personal connection to China. My
parents were born and raised in the Philippines; they arrived in the United
States shortly after the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality
Act, which reversed nearly a century of racist quotas that effectively pro-
hibited immigrants from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean while allowing
European immigrants to enter the country legally. Timing enabled me to
be born in New York, to grow up middle class and “legal” in America. My
parents and I lived in a nearly all- white suburb and took regular trips to
Manhattan Chinatown for groceries , but we felt like we didn’t belong there
either, among more recent immigra nts. “ You’re lucky,” my parents said, and
I knew I was supposed to be grateful for something, but lucky also felt like
a warning — how precarious status could be.
I couldn’t read, understand, or speak Chinese. In Fuzhou, shop owners
and cab drivers eyeballed me and asked, “What kind of person are you?”
when I stammered nonsensically at them. I didn’t blame them. Each night,
I got lost on my way back to my hotel. As I walked, I thought of the many
Fuzhounese immigrants who had moved to New York. Unlike many of
them, I had the privilege of a US passport, the freedom of mobility.
When I started writing The Leavers in 2009, I had a folder stuffed with
newspaper clippings about immigrant women and their children. I was fas-
cinated by how these women were represented in mainstream media, as
tragic victims or evi l invaders. A nd I was f urious at the for- profit detention
facilities — outsourced to private prison corporations and functioning, in
Reader-6.1_2PP.indb 25 9/14/16 11:29 AM
