Most of the students in my memoir workshops at Lehman College in the Bronx are immigrants, first generation American, and/or people of color. They come from the Dominican Republic, India, Gambia, Kazakhstan – all over the world – and their writing is rich with fresh perspectives and beloved customs. Whether their grandmothers soothed them with warm parathas, milk chai, feta cheese bureks or Pastelon de Papas, the writers in these essays evoke both their love for their background cultures and their pursuit of an elusive American dream.
Some of the writers left behind traumas in other countries only to face staggering difficulties in New York, including barriers to employment and drug laws which disproportionately target their non-white families. Now, when I read media reports that condemn people who break drug laws or use resourceful skills to survive in a hostile place, I consider too that the person may also have been a generous provider, who helped extended family members to pay their rent and buy groceries, despite having only an elementary school education and few work skills.
The title of the anthology comes from Steven Ngin’s gripping story of his family’s escape from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia when he was four years old. He rode on his father’s back as they crossed the Mekong River and watched his slipper float away. Steven was malnourished, had witnessed atrocities and often endured the terror of being alone for long hours at night in strange houses while his mother was forced by soldiers to work in rice fields. The image of his slipper disappearing is seared in his memory and provides the visual and poetic hook to frame his story – but the lost slipper metaphor also works for the other essays because they too are permeated by the theme of people moving forward after sustaining losses.
