I stumbled across a 30-minute documentary last night that stirred something deep in my soul.
Sing Me a Lullaby traces the story of Tiffany Hsiung, a Taiwanese-Canadian documentary filmmaker on a quest to help her mom find her birth mother in Taiwan.
Hsiung is the director, the narrator and a central character in the movie. Sing Me a Lullaby has touches of a home movie and an award winning documentary film. It is deftly made, going from the present to the past and back to present.
I have visited Taiwan a few times so the sounds and sights of the country are familiar. I could feel the humidity and smell the sea air. My parents went to Taiwan for college and my aunt and cousins lived in Taiwan.
Hsiung’s story, while not mine, feels like a shared experience. Almost every child of immigrant parents has questions about how their parents lives unfolded.
I have been thinking a lot about family these days–learning new stories about relatives who have gone before I was ready to say goodbye.
A New Yorker article about Sing Me a Lullaby.