Shades Within Us

FOREWORD Lucas K. LawEach of us has our own idea and vision of migrations and fractured borders. Often, our first thought is of migrations on the physical plane, though with consideration we might recognize emotional or even spiritual migrations. These days, there is a tendency to associate migrations with refugees and illegal immigrants. There are dangers in such assumptions. My maternal grandfather and his brother left China with their father in 1916. They left their sister and family behind. Later, during the Chinese civil war in the late 1940s, my grandfather lost contact with his sister. Though he gained opportunities in Malaysia, his adopted country, he lost all family ties in China, the country he left behind. My grandfather spent most of his life in rural plantations and fishing villages, as a shopkeeper, a farmer, and a small business owner, before he retired. When he could no longer care for himself, he moved again, to the city, to live with his son and family. So often, physical movement is the focus of a migration story when it first unfolds. But each move is more than a simple relocation. It is a transformation of time, place, and being. Each decision affects a multiplicity of others. It is difficult for those who have never faced such decisions to truly comprehend the complexity and conflict that takes place in body, mind, and spirit—what my grandfather and so many others had gone through in such transitions, responding to economic challenges, employment and new opportunities, and finally, to failing health. And these are only a few of the myriad factors affecting the reasons people migrate. Migrants are much more than refugees and illegal immigrants. We might name “them” in many different ways, and cast them in new lights: explorers, drifters, nomads, expatriates, evacuees, pilgrims, colonists, aliens, strangers, visitors, intruders, conquerors, exiles, asylum seekers, outsiders. Within such complexity, what are the commonalities? Transition and change. Boundaries, visible or invisible, voluntary or involuntary, internal or external. The price paid. And the attainment of a new life, a new world, a new reality, for good or ill. The genesis of this anthology comes from my family history, but it also comes as an outgrowth of the first two anthologies in the ‘social causes’ series, Strangers Among Us: Tales of the Underdogs and Outcasts—the fine balance between mental health and mental illness—and The Sum of Us: Tales of the Bonded and Bound—the world of caregiving and caregivers. In Shades Within Us, Eric Choi, Gillian Clinton, and twenty-one authors capture the displacement of the migrating body, mind, and spirit to explore struggles and sacrifices, survival and redemption, losses and gains, in their Tales of Migrations and Fractured Borders. They ask us to open our eyes to see, our ears to hear, and our hearts to understand, that each of us may be impacted somewhere along our journeys. And they also ask us to face those adversities and challenges with equal determination, resiliency, and humility—and not to hide behind the shades within us. Please support your local charitable organizations and do take care of your own health. Be kind and generous to yourself and to others. Be ready to give back and pay forward. A portion of this anthology’s net revenue goes to support Mood Disorders Association and the Alex Community Food Centre. —Lucas K. Law, Calgary and Qualicum Beach, Canada, 2018