A voice discovered
She passed unnoticed through a century. Now her written legacy has come to light.
Mary Tchunki Fan Huang faced erasure all her life – as a concubine’s daughter in Imperial China, a poor cousin in a powerful family, a neglected wife, and an invisible low-wage worker in the USA.
But she left an extraordinary legacy: hundreds of letters, in eloquent, self-taught English, which conjure up the life of a woman seeking her footing on foreign soil, spurring her children to succeed, yearning for their love, and coping, again and again, when things do not turn out as expected.
“I would compare this family of ours to a small craft sailing in dangerous channels, without a worthy captain at its head, not having up-to-date charts showing all danger points.”
Mary TF Huang to her son Luc, February 1961
THE BOOK
Let Me Hear from You
Three generations of connections missed and made
by Mary TF Huang and Eliane Kinsley
Told in two voices – Mary TF Huang’s in the letters, as events unfold, and her grand-daughter’s now, grappling with what the letters reveal – Let Me Hear from You builds a multi-faceted portrait of an imperious and vulnerable woman, and the family whose course she tried to steer.
“I thought my grandmother’s only legacy was her grief,” said Eliane Kinsley, until the discovery of the letters forces her to reconsider the woman she thought she knew.