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So try to think back what it was really like coming to this country, your initial impressions

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of it.

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The contrast, a lot of my reminiscence or nostalgic memories have to do with places

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at this point in my life.

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So the contrast, I'll try to illustrate it.

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The region where I spent my childhood, Ayutthaya was a small town.

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I think at the time there was around 2,000 people spread over a pretty wide valley area.

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It was surrounded by mountains and there was two rivers, major rivers passing through.

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I spent some of my time with my father's parents and there was even more in the rural section,

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more isolated, less people.

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And what I recall is again the feeling of the mountains, the air in the morning,

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what the morning do, and we usually had fog.

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There was like clouds, I remember enjoying so much.

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What appeared like the heaven had come down to the mountains, so we had this fog covering the top of the mountains

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and the sun coming through, so there was this silvery glow to the mornings.

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The other things I recall are the smell after rain.

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Streets were dirt roads and just that smell was something that I enjoyed.

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Until this day I enjoyed especially being around the parks or the smell of grass and the earth after rain.

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The other thing was the clearness of the environment.

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There was no fog, there was no smell of smoke.

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One of my earliest memories of Chicago was when we drove into Chicago coming by way of the Skyway

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and seeing this reddish-blackish glow covering the city, which is something, a premonition of something,

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a premonition of some kind of doom or gloom.

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I was a pollution of Chicago, but it had again these other meanings for me.

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The neighborhood where we did live in a different house for a while, but I don't recall that time.

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The apartment where we lived, the one that I recall was the one where we didn't have any space.

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It was the alley was concrete and garbage and the sidewalk all concrete, so everything was concrete.

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We had a tree, which I love, that tree next door, the only thing that I could connect to.

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Different architecture.

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My grandmother on my father's side, her house was built of adobe,

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so also that memory of the smell of the house after rain was pretty much a smell of earth.

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Here was the concrete that cement would, different way of designing.

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These were one family homes with usually a space for a garden and very open.

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Lots of windows in our apartment didn't have that.

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It faced the back, so there was very little light coming into our house as well.

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I guess probably we need to sum up what that meant to you.

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Emotionally, the memories just clashed and elicited a sense of homesickness

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that at this point I even resist eliciting in myself.

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I think that this was an experience that my parents as well as other family friends had.

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As a result of that, we had little processions to Grand Park and to the Lake,

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because these were places where a little bit fragments of home could be nurtured and carried within ourselves.

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Okay, thank you.

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Scene 11, take one.

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I'll wait for my cue.

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Okay, whenever you're ready.

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To give you a sense of what it felt like to a young girl or teenager living in the neighborhood that I did,

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just a few years, I think it was three or four years after I'd come into the United States, one of my...

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Let's do that at speed.

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Scene 12, take one.

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This is something I wrote...

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Okay, wait, now, okay.

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This is something I wrote when I was, I think, 16 or 17,

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which expresses some of the feelings about growing in that neighborhood.

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It's in September, and it starts,

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Today we celebrate Mexican Independence Day.

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Who is independent? Who is free?

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The city is so noisy. There are so many sounds.

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Car wheels screeching, horns blowing, sirens wailing, radios blaring, loud TVs,

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spearing out meaningless sounds that sound like human talk.

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I hear my neighbors arguing or celebrating,

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preachers preaching, Jesus people out, saving people, crying, repent.

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Vote for me. This is the way. Everybody's talking. No one says anything.

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Let there be silence. I can't hear myself with all this noise.

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Everybody's afraid in the city. We fear ourselves. We cannot face what we are.

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We fear each other. We hide behind a dial.

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Our doors are securely locked to keep intruders out and keep our wealth within.

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We cannot walk about the city streets freely.

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There are certain areas that cannot be trespassed.

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White does not live in Black Street. Black cannot live in White Street.

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Birds of a feather must flock together. Look out. They're out to get you.

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Don't go there alone. Always look behind you when you walk the streets at night.

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Somebody was raped. Somebody was killed.

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There are worse fates. To live and be afraid.

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We all wear some type of armor to defend ourselves because we are afraid.

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We surround ourselves with walls to keep intruders out and keep ourselves within.

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We are afraid. We are feathered by fear.

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But today we will celebrate our independence.

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Thank you.

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Scene 14, take one.

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Okay, we're ready.

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Thinking back, my exposure to the murals, which opened the rest of the world,

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for me, they were a source of inspiration for me.

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I had the curiosity that I had anyway that I could trust it.

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In college, I was exposed to different cultures, different peoples.

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All of that continued to nurture.

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I don't know if it's an urgency, but the desire to, as an individual, be more open to my experiences,

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break loose from the sense of isolation that I experienced as an immigrant.