二十岁的独白 (Soliloquy at 20, II)

2022

Woodblock print on custom-shaped, pulp-painted, handmade cotton paper

Edition of 8

The printed text is extracted from an essay that my mother wrote in her 1987 college newspaper, right as she was turning twenty. The essay was shared with me as a gift on the eve of my 20th birthday. In the carved quote, the lines read, “People keep congratulating me and saying, ‘Twenty years old, this is when your real life experiences are only just beginning!’ Is that true? Did all my experiences before count for nothing, then?”

This piece reflects on how much we don’t know about our parents and the uncertainty they embodied in their youth, the whole lives they lived before having kids, before they were immigrants, before they grew into all the identities and responsibilities that they are defined by today.