Director's Statement

I began to work in film because I was saddened and inspired by the ways people grapple with alienation and displacement. The Trained Chinese Tongue examines how Chinese immigrants live at the complex crossroads of food, language, colonization, and immigration. I approach a series of strangers--all immigrant women--in a Chinatown grocery store and follow them home for dinner.

My work-in-progress, Don't Worry, I'm Fine, concerns the letters I have been writing to my grandmother in the name of her dead daughter, my aunt Maisy. The ritual began ten years ago with Aunt Maisy's death and my mother's decision that my mentally ill grandmother was too unstable to be told the truth. The film explores how my role as a link between these two women has evolved as I accompany my grandmother through two of the worst episodes of her long mental illness.
My hope is to represent these struggles on their own terms, using points of reference integral to everyday life--such as cooking or writing letters--to reveal narratives too often obscured.