Searching for Sylvie Lee

Monday, May 2

Amy watches her parents leave their apartment in Queens for work. Although she has completed a master’s degree, she has yet to find a real career and is living with her parents while planning to obtain a teacher’s license. Her parents, originally from Guangdong, China, work long hours. Her mother is employed at a local laundromat, and her father works at a fish market. Amy’s grandmother has just died, and Ma is noticeably bereft.

Amy has an older sister, Sylvie, who is 33. Amy thinks that “dazzling” Sylvie got the beauty and the brains. While Amy is drifting through life, Sylvie is firmly anchored in her career as a management consultant after finishing a bachelor’s at Princeton, a Master in Chemical Engineering at MIT, and an MBA from Harvard. Amy loves Sylvie but is envious of her sister’s beauty, intelligence, and success. Amy also believes that Sylvie’s early life in the Netherlands, where Sylvie lived with Ma’s cousin, Helena, until age nine, was “glamorous.”

Sylvie is back in the Netherlands both for a work assignment and because of their grandmother’s illness. While browsing in a local music store, Amy gets a call from her cousin, Lukas, Helena’s son.