Status Updates From Watercress

Stunning. Have spent my adulthood unpacking why I snubbed my grandmother’s picked mushrooms and garden-made food in favor of the grocery store. And I felt again all that pain and shame and misunderstanding while reading this.

Illustrations were also gorgeous.

Beautiful story and illustrations. The author’s note shared that this “story was both an apology and a love letter” to her Chinese parents who raised their family in the US.
The artist’s note indicated that he, too, put inspiration from his Chinese family into this book.

"I take a bite of the watercress and it bites me back with its spicy, peppery taste. It is delicate and slightly bitter, like Mom's memories of home."

"I look...to the watercress...and I am ashamed of being ashamed of my family." (Her family gathered it together earlier in the book).

"During the great famine,' [Mom] says, 'we ate anything we could find.'"

"Free is bad. Free is hand-me-down clothes."