Why a Booktrail?
2000s: We all find memories, but it’s the nourishing them and learning from them that is key.
The Year of Finding Memory
What you need to know before your trail
Growing up in her father’s hand laundry in small town Ontario, Judy Fong Bates love to listen to stories of her parents’ past lives in China. Compared to her life now, where she lives in poverty and has trouble fitting in, she loves finding out about where her parents came from. But deep down, she wants to become a Canadian girl and live a happy life in her new country.
Many years later however, she is still curious about finding out about her parents history and that of her own, so she travels back to China in order to find the memories she knows are right there waiting for her. To help her tell her story.
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An emotional story about unravelling your past and hoping to make sense of your present and future. As a young child, to have moved from your home in China to Canada must have been tricky. Her father had already made the move and now his wife and child were following him.
They come in search of a better life but find that they also loose a little of themselves in the process. Judy’s parents were well off in China but in Canada they have to take menial jobs but do end up working in a laundry business. They don’t speak English however and so their full insertion into their new home is limited.
Judy however is young enough to immerse herself completely – and piece by piece, she trails through the memories of the past and the stories of the present to find out about her parents and their story so far. From China to Canada, this is a story of culture, of escape from the Cultural Revolution, how Canada welcomed them and the role immigrants play in immersing themselves into their new home.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information: The Year of Finding Memory: A Memoir
Author/ Guide: Judy Fong Bates Destination: Guangdong province, Kaiping, Allandale Departure Time: Various
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