Dear mom
Dear mom is an auto documentary series that illustrate the emotional and cultural distances between second generations children and their immigrant parents. Since growing up as a Canadian-born Vietnamese, I never really understood the emotional weight that my mom has been going through before and after immigrating to Canada. She often felt homesick while living in Montreal while I always viewed Montreal as my only home. Consequently, this led me to become more distant from my mother over time because she did not understand my personal struggle. While I had issues with belongingness, I still had a place I could call home whereas my mother left everything she had back in Vietnam and abandoned her home to offer me a better life. Ironically, in the end, her kind intents built a wall that divided us to a point where we could never have a genuine emotional connection. The notion of ‘’Family’’ doesn’t have it meaning anymore when we realize that the person that has been the closest to you in your life can also be the person that you know the least.
Through the exploration of my own house and found archived images, this series reveals the history behind my mom's immigration, what it is like to be far away from ‘’home’’ and finally, the story about a kid that only wants to be close to his mom again.
