Cynthia Lin

What does it take for a mother not to recognize her own daughter on the street? Ying leaves home after eating breakfast with her father, who burns the mail every morning following her mother’s disappearance fifteen years earlier. As Ying takes the train, she is guided by a cassette recording of her mother’s voice. Images of Ying’s past are interwoven, memories of Fuzhou and the childhood fable of the “snake spirit” that brought her parents to New York City. These fragments guide Ying as she tries to understand her mother’s disappearance, later revealed to involve an immigration raid.