Open Collections

Luat, Jiro; Reyes, Berkeley; Hsieh, Judith

Despite an absent family, a moonlight shines as a pathway for the warm and comforting future. The astronaut family paints an abstract picture where this dichotomy between cultural values creates barriers for both fulfilling independence and family orientation. The intimacy and unconditional love for one another expressed nonverbally, defines what our family is despite facing both worlds. Moving to a new country isn’t as simple as merely moving bodies across physical spaces. Children who move during their formative years have to navigate the difficult psychological space of reconciling different emerging identities, and families have to manage a difficult relational space because it often splits up parents, creating astronaut families. All of this will strain relationships between parents, and between children and their parents. For Jiro, these issues deeply affected him and his development, and he masterfully showcases this process and his thoughts with a beautiful dance performance. Watch the video below and the accompanying statement to get a good glimpse of what this experience was/is like for him. If you had to move to a completely different cultural environment, and had to adjust while also navigating fraying relationships with other family members, what would that feel like?

Text; Moving Image

University of British Columbia. ACAM 320B

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0437207

Arts, Faculty of

Undergraduate

DSpace