UNTOLD: A Chinese-American Generation Gap

This story is a part of Lit Mag: The UNTOLD Issue.

It’s the last day of Chinese New Year celebrations. My extended family and I are crammed in the tiny restaurant in Fruitvale. My grandmother, Yun Yin Fang, the matriarch of the family, sits at the head of the table. She is a small woman with permed black hair and bright eyes, and this is undeniably the most important holiday of the year for her. She’s in her element in this oasis of Chinese-ness  - surrounded by grandkids, she’s sips tea and yells at waiters in Mandarin. But she isn’t always this comfortable in the U.S. To my grandmother, being an immigrant means carrying a burden to prove herself.

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Sierra Fang-Horvath is a junior at Acalanes High School in Lafayette, California and has lived in Oakland for her entire life. She inherited her passion for writing and journalism from her aunt Bay Fang, a professional journalist who has traveled the world. Her key motive for writing remains to, very simply, share stories. Nowadays, too many people spend time engrossed in their own bubbles, rather than being interested and empathetic to the lives of others. That’s what Sierra seeks to achieve through journalism: to create empathy and understanding among the citizens of this world.