Ms. Katie's Parent's Story

By: Manuel Sola Castillo 

Ms. Katie loves her parents a lot because they have done a lot of things for her over the years. They put her through school; they paid for all her college. They raised her and they let her do piano lessons, tennis lessons, they let her do all these things that she was interested in. She knows that they love her even though they don’t say it every day to her. She knows they love her. And she loves them and she thing it is interesting because she think that I am an immigrant and her parents are immigrants. “So the same generation and so”. She thinks that sometimes between generations it is hard to communicate but also between cultures it is really hard to communicate. She thinks her parents really do love her.

Ms. Katie’s dad immigrated from China for college, and her mom immigrated because she was following her family, who was here. Her mom’s family had been here for six generations. Her grandfather came here illegally. What happened is that he came and back then there were not computers. Nothing like that. So they put information on papers. (There is not computers nothing right). He was in San Francisco and he said there was a big fire in San Francisco. In the buildings with all the records of residents burned down in the ground. So did San Francisco people, said the police said.

After the fire, the president said, if  you are citizen, come.” And lot of a Chinese people who did not have papers said. Ok. I am a citizen. I have papers. That is how he came years and years ago. And then her mom came with her family. They used a plane to get here. But her grandfather used a big boat to get here. They did have enough money to immigrate. But her mom family’s did have enough money to immigrate. But when they got here, they weren’t really rich, they had to work in pretty hard jobs.

 So her dad he went to college, but he also worked three jobs to get himself to college. So her mom came for high school and she learned English in high school and then she wanted to be a farmer. So she became a farmers and she went to college for that. Her  dad went to college he went he went to school in New York, but he did not like that. So then he switched to another school where her mom was to follow her. And he also became a farmer. She  thinks her mom realize that she had to be more open than in China. In China she had to sit be quiet, be silent.

Her mom tell this funny story about the first she came to the United States. And she sat in class and she didn’t understand any English and there was another kid in class-not Chinese, American who was walking around the classroom and she was saying, “what is he doing?” Ms. Katie thinks her mom was like “oh my god how can people do that in here? In China this is not ok.’’