College Honors Program

The End of the 7: Chinese Catholic Immigrants in Flushing

Date of Creation

5-1-2022

Document Type

Campus Access Only

First Advisor

Leah H. Cohen

Abstract

My thesis is a creative nonfiction that documents the lives of the Chinese Catholic immigrants in Flushing, NY: a community that surrounds one Chinese church of St. John Vianney. It consists of three parts: interviewing 25 subjects ranging from 13-95 years old in Mandarin, translating around 42 hours of voice recordings, and composing the selected stories into a narrative that takes place over the span of a week. The thesis follows the stories of Mr. Jiang Guoping, a 60-year-old man from Fujian, whose undocumented immigration story as a Catholic to the U.S. represents most of the recent immigrants in Flushing: to seek a more effective way to pay off his debts at home, he paid to be smuggled into the U.S. without any legal status and eventually found his way to Flushing, to St. John Vianney, and acquired asylum-based Green Card with the help of the Catholic community there. Another main character, Mrs. Zheng, is also from Fujian, came to the U.S. in the early 2000s alone to pay off debts just like Mr. Jiang, crossed the U.S.-Canada border behind the seats in a van and found her faith and her second home in Flushing. The thesis also covers the story of a Chinese priest, Fr. Thi, who converted and served as a witness in the immigration court for over 2000 Chinese immigrants, which enabled most of them to continue to stay in the U.S. with a religious asylum based Green Card. The nonfiction also explores the reality of the second-generation Chinese American youths at this church, whose parents can barely speak English while they can barely speak Chinese: their education, social life, and their conflicted identities. It is a collection of stories that record the childhood, the journey, the alienation and the belonging one experiences in this small Chinese Catholic community.

Comments

Reader: Ji Hao

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS