Stay True: A Memoir

Chapter 2 focuses on Hua’s family. Hua’s father immigrated to the US from Taiwan in 1965, at the age of 21, to pursue graduate studies in physics. After two years at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a stint at Columbia University in New York, Hua’s father followed his academic advisor to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, where he met his future wife (Hua’s mother). Like her husband, Hua’s mother had an aptitude for science and moved to the US from Taiwan to pursue her studies in 1971. The two married on their university campus and later settled in Cupertino, California. Nearly two decades later, when Hua was nine years old, his father moved back to Taiwan for work. Despite the distance, however, the two maintained a close relationship via fax and during visits.

Hua segues from his discussion of family into an overview of American immigration. The Opium Wars that devastated southeastern China in the 19th century coincided with the growing demand for cheap labor in the American West. However, several decades later, when the American economy no longer needed foreign labor, the US government implemented exclusionary immigration policies that barred Chinese workers from the country (a policy only repealed in 1965).