Unveiling Secrets Across Borders: A North Korean Daughter’s Heartbreaking Journey in "The Boat Not Taken"
Choi Kalbus’ narrative brought me back to the myriad questions I never thought to ask my father before his death in 2011; like the author and her mother, he emigrated from the Philippines in the 1930s via freighter, with his older sister and Chinese mother. And, like the author’s mother, my grandmother spoke no English, was born into gentility and had never worked “jobs” to support a family; she arrived in San Francisco with no husband and two half white children. Now that it’s too late, I wish I had listened more and asked more questions, about their lives as immigrants, outsiders; like the author, my father’s sister, my Aunt Ruth—older and more outgoing than my father—likely served as translator, intermediary and cultural ambassador for their mother. I can imagine what their family of three may have experienced, yet I will never know—their stories are piecemeal, fragments with huge chunks missing.
