Object Stories

I’ve been trying to figure out if I can grow a kola nut tree in America because in Igbo culture it’s incredibly important. We have a proverb that says “he who brings kola brings life.” And it’s just something that’s so much a part of my culture and childhood memories.

This is a photo of my parents’ grocery store in San Jose, California. This grocery store defined our lives for a decade, from 1978 to about 1988, but it no longer exists. I’ve always associated this store and this street with what we faced, or what my parents faced as Vietnamese refugees and newcomers to this country.

This is a charm bracelet that my parents gave me when I was 7 years old as a reward for doing well in school. I grew up with this idea that knowledge was magic, and could take you out of where you were born.

This little felt frog that my parents had gotten me. It was, you know, it’s my lovey. That little, tiny frog made this ridiculous journey back and forth between continents a couple times.

It actually is not from my Vietnamese culture. My father’s best friend is a Jewish man, and he gave this to me in the first grade. It says “shalom,” and it's a symbol of my love for him, and his encouragement of my writing.

It’s a dress that reminds me of where I come from because I come from a very poor family in Mexico. And my grandmother, when times were really hard, had a dress made out of tablecloth. And I still own this dress.

I’m not an object oriented person. The only objects I keep in my house that I’m attached to are books, and I’m attached to them for the content. I’m not even attached to them for the particular book itself unless I’ve marked it up.

This is called a khamsa. It’s a talisman that protects the wearer from the evil eye, and it's a part of Moroccan culture that goes across religions and is shared with other countries. The one that I have is one that my mother has given me, so I wear it all the time, and it connects me to her and to my home country.

My father’s wallet. This was an ordinary, very worn wallet with a whole treasure trove of life lived, and that essential feeling that I’m carrying it with me, I’m going wherever I’m going. It was an expression of someone who has floated in life. This was an immigrant.

I used to have a gold signet ring with my mother’s family crest on it. It was just three leaves and three flowers. I was really sad when I lost it, because it symbolized to me everything that’s important to me—my family, my culture in Japan and my connection to all of that.

This is the funeral card for my mom, and it shows the holy family. It reminds me of just the importance for me of family, and more importantly, sort of in the literary perspective, it was my mom who first gave me the love of reading.

This is an album filled with photographs of my early childhood, including the four years when I lived in China. When I immigrated to the U.S., my line back to a lot of my relatives was through these photographs and my past was being reconstructed, in many ways, through what I could see, because I couldn’t actually remember what it was like to live there.

My grandfather had an extensive collection of samurai swords. They’re so vivid because they were so precious, and we weren’t allowed to go anywhere near them. One day, when I was about 11, I got this 700-year-old sword and cut a lamp in half with it. And my grandfather was purple with rage. So the sword has a lot of meaning.

This is a pencil pouch, and it says Kokila. It’s an imprint at Penguin Random House, and I published my last books with them. My children get to read the kind of books that a place like this publishes, with voices that are from every aspect of the world, all different cultures, and the beauty of the diversity of our world. And so I love it.

My object is a picture of my parents on their wedding day. That picture seems to me, for some reason, significant, both because her face looks like mine at that moment in her life, and also I feel like it’s in some ways the true beginning of my life.

I’ve had this statue of the Santo Niño de Atocha forever. It sat on the dresser of my mother’s house, and a huge amount of memories and feelings are connected to it. Another object would probably be a photograph of my father, who died when I was eight years old. A third would be the molcajete, the mortar and pestle. Those are the objects that mean a lot to me, that I still carry with me, and I’m gonna hopefully be able to pass them on to my children.

My father gave me this ring when I was born, ‘cause in the Middle East it’s a custom to use turquoise to ward off the evil eye. But I’m half American and half Jordanian. And my mother, being American, didn’t put it on me because, you know, choking. So I feel like this symbolizes many aspects of both my culture and my family.

As a result of my background, I'm confused about finding some sort of token that would point to three places at the same time. That would be Ireland, where I was born, Turkey, which is where my mother’s family is from, and Holland, which is where I grew up. Of course now I’m American. And so it would have to be some sort of rainbow-like thing which doesn’t exist yet.

I look at my life now and any object I can think of doesn’t satisfy me. It doesn’t make me feel that deep connection. I feel like what that connection is actually is within me rather than in an object.

This is my father's Freemason's apron, which amuses my children vastly. When I was ten years old, my father embezzled a large amount of money, faked his own death and disappeared. He reappeared years later when I was at university and wanting to belong somewhere, he rejoined the Bradford Freemasons.

My American passport because before I had received this, I had forgotten what it felt like to feel at home. I carry around all of my precious things everywhere I go, including my passport. This is the thing that allows me to come back home, I guess.

My family comes from Michoacán and Monarch butterflies are the symbol of Michoacán. I’ve adopted it as a kind of symbol of my own writing, my coming out, my being a immigrant because of the migration patterns of the butterfly, but also because it’s a symbol of rebirth, of resilience.

When I was a kid growing up in Jamaica, we had a mango tree in our backyard. That's significant because when my family immigrated to the States it was all about enjoying this new adventure. But at some point I began to miss that experience, and so whenever I now have a mango it not only is enjoying that rich flavor, but it’s also about that memory that I try to keep with me in this new part of my life.

It’s the absence of a family photograph that is significant in my life. I have searched in my mom’s house in Mexico, I have searched in my sister’s house in San Antonio, and that picture doesn’t exist. It’s because we’ve never, all of us, lived in the same place at the same time. We’ve always been separated by the border.

Many years ago I went to Peru for research on a show and we went to a market, and there was this stunning young girl in her traditional dress. We took a photo of her and I made a large print that I have framed in my living room. And then a portrait of Frida Kahlo, it’s in my dining room.

There are two objects. One was my father had a rocking chair made for him in Mexico, which seemed to represent Mexico and all of its ways. My mother, being from New York, had a French mirror from George Washington’s day. And they’re together in storage, and I’m waiting for the day when I can bring them home because one is my mom's legacy and the other is my dad's.

I brought this teacup set that my grandmother gave to me. It was given to her on her wedding day many years ago by her great-aunt. I don’t know how old it is or how much it’s worth, but it’s something that I really treasure because my grandmother means everything to me.

A tub of Vaporu, which is known in English as VapoRub. Growing up Vaporu was what we got every time we started to get sick. Vaporu was our original healthcare, as we on Twitter put it. And I think that’s true.

It’s always been the music. My parents listened to traditional ranchera music, and I’ve always lived away from my family, so I’m always playing the music, and that always makes me feel at home no matter where I’m at.