After leaving the church, we traveled the two short blocks to my grandmother’s home on Elm Street. The night was dark and late as my brother navigated the driveway, illuminating the front door with the headlights of the rental car. My mother and I stood in the bright light while my husband, Alex, fumbled with the key handed to him by my uncle at the church dinner following the funeral. To the left of the entrance, the screened-in porch drooped, with the fine mesh torn and wooden planks rotten enough to reveal the dirt and leaves beneath.
Upon stepping inside, we reminded each other which lights were safe to turn on, avoiding those my uncle warned us about due to their old and frayed wiring. It was January 2004 in Marks, Mississippi, and the cool, slightly damp air inside carried the scent of mildew. My grandmother—whom we affectionately called Por Por in Cantonese—had spent much of the last decade living with her children, moving from one home to another. Yet, her little one-story house, with its sloping roof and towering tree out front, remained the heart of our family. This was the house my mother left behind when she moved to New York City, where I spent Christmases as a child with my cousins piled up on the floor. Everything felt unchanged.
Por Por would have playfully scolded her grandchildren and great-grandchildren—ages seven to 37—if she’d caught us huddled together at her coffin, slipping handwritten notes, a piece of jade, a pecan tart, and a crayoned ticket to heaven into the satin cushion. She would have scrunched her smooth 87-year-old face, puckering her lips at me—her way of saying “Oh, hush”—if she knew I stayed up all night writing four single-spaced pages about her to read at her funeral. If I had told her it was harder to write four pages than 40, she would have waved me away with her gentle hand.
I wanted to capture the essence of who she was, and I believed she would have appreciated it. There were the glowing attributes: a kind-hearted churchgoer, the lady who baked pecan tarts for church events and birthday cakes for neighborhood kids designed like superheroes. A devoted friend, she corresponded regularly with a pen pal since she was nine. The best grandma ever, a Sunday school teacher, and a thoughtful neighbor.
Por Por would have been pleased with that list, but I think she would have chuckled, secretly pleased, to hear me tell the packed First Baptist Church in the heart of the South that she was, in fact, a passionate liberal who sent me emails filled with typos and random slashes, all in caps, declaring “DUBYA IS AN IDIOT. THESE STUPID MEN ARE SENDING THIS COUNTRY STRAIGHT DOWN.” This side of her was never something she would flaunt while she was alive.
Yet, there was so much more that went unspoken. I longed to share with the cousins, church friends, and even the mayor of Marks everything about her. I wanted to give her what she always desired: the opportunity to be truly known. I would have revealed her lingering anger toward my grandfather, Gung Gung, for some unresolved grievance even 33 years after his passing, and her frustration with finding her place within the lives of her adult children.
Por Por and I often found ourselves in disagreement. I encouraged her to express her feelings; she urged me to show more kindness. Raised in a time and place that imposed emotional limitations, she struggled with the sadness and loss from her childhood when both her mother and grandmother passed away, yet lacked the words to articulate that pain. She remained the young mother who not only lost her firstborn son at 34 when he was just 12, but also lost an irreplaceable bond with her other children that day.
I wished for everyone in the room to see her as I did. We often clashed; I pushed her to assert herself while she encouraged me to take a step back. I dismissed Dr. Phil’s credibility, and she insisted it didn’t matter to her. I rolled my eyes, and she simply smiled.
Not everyone can say they had their grandmother until they were 34, but she was my person, and I was hers. We looked out for one another. In her 70s, I dubbed her “Grambo” for her indomitable spirit. As I stood before her coffin reading from my notes, I remembered how she often told me I was the only one who truly understood her. For many years, I cherished that unique bond, but now I wanted everyone else to share in the joy—and the weight—of knowing her.
The Poorest County in the United States
Por Por moved to Marks—a town with a population of about 1,500—in 1935 from Chicago’s Chinatown to begin her married life with Gung Gung. Family lore suggests that upon her arrival, the entire town gathered at the small train station to greet her. She often recounted that geography wasn’t the only thing that separated her from her old life—the Chinese girl from the bustling city—she was just 20.
Marks is the seat of Quitman County. Notably, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited in 1966 and witnessed a teacher dividing four apples and a box of crackers among impoverished students, bringing him to tears. In 1968, the year my mother had my older brother in Los Angeles, Dr. King returned to Marks during the initial stages of his Poor People’s Campaign, aiming to combat poverty and racism. In a speech delivered shortly before his assassination, he referred to “Quitman County, which I understand is the poorest county in the United States.” A month after his death, a symbolic mule train departed from Marks, heading to Washington, D.C.
It seemed unlikely that Por Por would leave her urban life to settle in the rural South. The transition was challenging; she went from streetcars to dirt roads, from a million-person city to former plantation lands. Chicago had its share of racial issues—she often told me about the Chinese and Italians who would stand on opposing street corners hurling insults—yet in Mississippi, the racial divide was a deeper, more painful wound. Nevertheless, she adapted because she found a community.
Many Chinese families established roots in the Delta, a migration that began during Reconstruction, after plantation commissaries closed. Chinese immigrants, recognizing an opportunity, chose to open grocery stores catering to black customers rather than take on the hard labor expected of them by white people. My grandfather was among them. He arrived from China alone at 14, joined family in Marks, and later opened Wing’s Grocery Store.
Having visited Marks since childhood, I was familiar with the squat houses, dry brown lawns, and sagging Main Street lined with a few empty or sparsely stocked stores. Yet, the reality of shanties with paper-covered windows and no electricity—where people genuinely lived—was always jarring. Marks felt like a movie set for a Southern town, complete with character actors.
On one of our trips to Marks as children, my brother and I entered a dimly lit pharmacy. The pharmacist scrutinized us, paused, and then remarked, “You must be some of the Wings. Are you Virginia Faye’s kids?” At that time, my mother had been away from Marks for over 30 years. While it wasn’t hard to identify us as “some of the Wings,” given our partial Chinese appearance, the fact that he recognized us as Virginia Faye’s kids illustrated the nature of small-town life. He quickly assessed our ages and genders to determine our lineage, showcasing a form of small-town logic we didn’t encounter back home in California.
When my mother was growing up, Marks was a place with segregated water fountains and schools. She recalls older black men stepping off the sidewalk and tipping their hats as she walked by. Then, as now, flat highways lined with cotton fields were the only means of entering or leaving town.
In Marks, whether superficial or not—something that can’t be quantified—the Chinese were accepted. Por Por and Gung Gung raised six children while managing their grocery store at the corner of Main Street, right where “colored town” began. Eventually, they moved from an apartment behind their business to the house on Elm Street, situated in the predominantly white section of town.
Being Chinese granted them a slight edge over black residents in the segregated South. Perhaps because there was always someone lower on the social ladder, or maybe due to the town’s relative tolerance, my grandparents were well-respected and successful. Over the years, their relatives became mayors, employers, landowners, and businesspeople. In nearby towns, Chinese children were expelled from white schools and forced to create their own or leave. But in Marks, the Chinese found acceptance, whether genuine or superficial.
The night before Por Por’s funeral, our extended family—including my mother, her four surviving siblings, and all eight grandchildren with their spouses and children—took over a Comfort Inn in Clarksdale, the larger town just 18 miles away, commandeering the function room. The cousins from Clarksdale prepared trays of homemade soy sauce chicken, barbecued pulled pork, strawberry trifle, and chocolate cakes.
We folded funeral programs on the buffet—Por Por had once expressed a desire for us to sing the hymn “How Great Thou Art” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a song from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, during her service. Breakfast tables were transformed into stations where we formed assembly lines to fill small white envelopes with nickels and coffee-flavored candies—a Chinese tradition meant to sweeten sorrow and provide luck.
We gathered pictures from our bags, passing them around the room before collaging them into frames to adorn the funeral home. Laughter filled the air as we reminisced, flipping through images of Por Por as a beautiful young woman modeling in Chinatown; with Gung Gung and their growing family; and at significant moments in our lives. I cherished a photo of Por Por on my right arm, my mother on my left, as they walked me down the aisle at my wedding just seven months prior, a moment of joy now tinged with bittersweet reflection.
In summary, my grandmother’s life story is one of resilience, community, and love, shaped by a unique cultural heritage intertwined with the challenges of living in Mississippi. Her legacy continues to inspire and connect us as a family.