Their Great Gift by John Coy

Author:John Coy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lerner Publications Company

Iam the youngest of six children and the only

one in my family not born in Guangzhou, China

(two of my brothers are missing from this family

photo, taken when I was about four). My parents,

my four brothers, and my sister left China at

different times in the early and mid 1900s, part

of what is called the first and second wave of

Chinese immigration to America.

I, however, was born and raised in Duluth,

Minnesota. Our family, typical of Chinese at the

time, owned a Chinese American restaurant.

Joe Huie’s Café served chop suey and egg

foo young as well as pot roast and chicken-

fried steak. For many years the restaurant was

open every day, twenty-four hours, and my

father, Joe, seldom took a day off, working

from eight in the morning to eight at night.

I started working in the family business

when I was twelve. My first job was to

keep the books, carefully writing down in

longhand the restaurant’s expenses in a

ledger. I then became a cashier, waiter, and

cook. I would tearfully complain that none

of my friends had to work, but in retrospect, I

had it much easier than my oldest brothers,

who had to be at the restaurant every single

day, long weekends and school days, while I

mostly worked in the summer.

My mother was a stay-at-home mom,

raising me and my siblings, taking care of

our tiny brick house, tending the garden in back,

and constantly writing letters to relatives back

in China. My father finally closed the restaurant

and retired when I was a junior in high school.

Several years later, in college, I bought a Minolta

SLR camera. Mom and Dad became my first

photography subjects.

—Wing Young Huie

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