Watercress
by Andrea Wang
illustrated by Jason Chin
illustrated by Jason Chin
Category
π
LearningTranscript
00:00In memory of my parents, Agnes Hsiao-Fung Lee and Edward Chung-Man Chan.
00:17Immigrants and Inspirations.
00:19ζδΉθ¨εζ.
00:21A W.
00:22For my father.
00:24JC.
00:26Watercress.
00:28By Andrea Wang.
00:30Pictures by Jason Chin.
00:33We are in the old Pontiac.
00:35The red paint faded by years of glinting Ohio sun pelting rain and biting snow.
00:42The tops of the corn stalks make lines that zigzag across the horizon.
00:47Mom shouts.
00:49Look, and the car comes to an abrupt jerking stop.
00:53Mom's eyes are as sharp as the tip of a dragon's claw.
00:57Dad's eyes grow wide.
00:59Watercress, they exclaim two voices heavy with memories.
01:04From the depths of the trunk.
01:07They unearth a brown paper bag rusty scissors and a longing for China.
01:12They haul us out of the back seat.
01:15We are told to untie our sneakers, peel off our socks, and roll up our jeans.
01:22We have to help them gather it.
01:25The water in the ditch is cold.
01:27It stings my ankles and the mud squelches up between my toes.
01:32A car passes by and I duck my head hoping it's no one I know.
01:37My parents cut bunches of the small plant long string stems with leaves round as coins.
01:43My big brother yanks watercress up by the handful roots dripping dirty water onto my shirt and thrusts it close to my face.
01:52There are tiny snails clinging to the underside.
01:56I squirm away.
01:58The bug in my hands grows heavier and heavier with the weight of all the watercress.
02:03The paper is soaked and I'm half afraid half hopeful that the bottom will split sending all the plants back down into the muck.
02:12Finally, we load everything the soggy bag my sopping shirt our sodden selves into the car and head home.
02:19Our original destination is long forgotten a memory of something unfinished.
02:25On the dinner table that night is a dish of watercress glistening with garlicky oil and freckled with sesame seeds.
02:32The mud and the snails are long gone but I still don't want to eat it.
02:37Any of it.
02:39I only want to eat vegetable from the grocery store.
02:43Mom and dad press me to try same.
02:46It is fresh dad says.
02:48It is free mom says.
02:51I shake my head.
02:53Free is bad.
02:55Free is hammer down clothes and roadside trash heap furniture and now dinner from a ditch.
03:01Mom sighs and disappears into her room returning with an old photo.
03:06My family she says.
03:08From before.
03:10We stare.
03:11Mom never talks about her china family.
03:15She points to a small boy as thin as a stem of watercress.
03:19From before.
03:21We stare.
03:23Mom never talks about her china family.
03:26My little brother.
03:28Your uncle.
03:30We hold our breaths.
03:32Mom never told us what happened to him.
03:35During the great famine she says.
03:38We ate everything we could find.
03:41But it was still not enough.
03:43I look from my uncle's hollow face to the watercress on the table and I am ashamed of being ashamed of my family.
03:51I take a bite of the watercress and it bites me back with its spicy peppery taste.
03:57It is delicate and slightly bitter like mom's memories of home.
04:01Together.
04:03We eat it all and make a new memory of watercress.
04:07A note from the author.
04:09This story is about the power of memory.
04:12Not just the beautiful memories like the ones my mother and father had about eating watercress in China,
04:19but also the difficult ones the memories that are sometimes too painful to share.
04:25It starts with my own distressing memory of being made to pick watercress that was growing wild by the side of the road.
04:32As the child of Chinese immigrants growing up in a small mostly white town in Ohio,
04:38I was very aware of how different my family and I were from everyone else.
04:43It's hard to feel like you don't belong and collecting food from a muddy roadside ditch just made that bad feeling more intense for me
04:51something my very practical parents didn't understand.
04:56When I was young, my parents didn't talk about their memories in China of growing up poor, losing siblings, and surviving war.
05:05I don't blame them these are difficult topics to discuss with children.
05:10But it's important too for children to understand their family history.
05:15Perhaps if I had known about the hardships they had faced.
05:20I would have been more compassionate as a child.
05:23Maybe I would have felt more empathy and less anger.
05:27More pride in my heritage and less shame.
05:30Memories have the power to inform to inspire and to heal.
05:35This story is both an apology and a love letter to my parents.
05:40It's also an encouragement to all children who feel different and to families with difficult pasts share your memories.
05:48Tell your stories.
05:50They are essential.
05:52A W.
05:54A note from the artist.
05:56When I first read Watercress, I was impressed by how Andrea was able to fold so many layers of memory culture and emotion into a short text
06:06and I wanted the illustrations to complement each of those layers.
06:10I wanted the art to reflect the American and Chinese heritage of the characters.
06:16I chose to paint in watercolor because it's common to both Chinese and Western art and I used both Chinese and Western brushes.
06:24The color palette is heavy in yellow ochre which reminds me of old photographs and 1970s decca and cerulean blue which is similar to the blue often used in Chinese paintings.
06:37Traditional Chinese landscape painting feature mountains painted with soft marks that create a dreamlike quality.
06:45This technique seemed appropriate for implying memory so I included many soft washes throughout the book.
06:52It is common for children of immigrants to be unaware of their parents' stories and culture and to feel out of place misunderstood and even angry.
07:02My own father also a child of Chinese immigrants rejected Chinese food when he was young in an effort to try and fit in.
07:11These feelings especially the anxiety that comes from feeling different are not limited to immigrants and their children they are universal.
07:19When I was painting, I drew on my own memories of exclusion loss and guilt with the hope that they might seep into the art and add another layer to Andrea's remarkable story.
07:31JC
07:33The End