24” x 36”

mixed media (rice sack, beads, sequins, stenciled text)

In 1933, Gee Theo Quee arrived at Angel Island with two daughters from her marriage to Gee Seow Hong, her husband. She also brought a daughter from his first marriage. She was really Gee Suey Ting who had entered the country as a "paper sister" to her spouse. In 1925, she married her husband and then moved to his village of Goon Do Hong. There, she cared for his mother as well as for the infant daughter from his first marriage, which had ended tragically when his first wife died. Each time her husband returned from the U.S. for a visit, she became pregnant, eventually giving birth to two more daughters. Suey Ting, a peasant, was accorded a high status by the villagers because she was the wife of a Gum San Hak (Gold Mountain Guest). With the money that her husband sent from the U.S., she purchased "moy nuey" (servant girl). After a one week stay at Angel Island, Suey Ting and Seow Hong lived apart from one another (the Immigration Service suspected they were really married) in Oakland's Chinatown. While Seow Hong and the two older girls lived on Webster Street, she and her youngest daughter lived with relatives on Eighth Street. Soon, they reunited and she eventually gave birth to three more daughters and a son.