We exited the small church and made our way the two short blocks to my grandmother’s home on Elm Street. The night was dark and late. My brother parked the rental car, directing the headlights towards the front door. My mother and I stood in the glaring light while my husband, Alex, fumbled with the key that my aunt had given him at the fellowship dinner in the church basement after the funeral. To the left of the door, the screened porch sagged, its fine mesh torn and wooden planks of the floor completely decayed. We could see leaves and dirt below through the gaping holes.
As we entered, we reminded one another which lights were safe to turn on—the ones my aunt warned us to avoid due to the old, fraying wiring. It was January 2004 in Marks, Mississippi, and the chill in the house felt damp and filled with a hint of mildew. My grandmother—whom we affectionately called Nai Nai in Cantonese—had spent most of the last decade away, shuttling between her children’s homes. But this small, one-story wooden structure, with its pitched roof and tall tree out front, was still the central hub for our family. It was the house my mother had left behind when she moved to New York City, the place where we celebrated Christmases as kids, piled up on the floor with cousins. Nothing about it had changed.
Nai Nai would have pretended to scold us—her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, ranging from seven to 37—if she’d seen us huddled together at her coffin, slipping handwritten notes, a small piece of jade, a pecan tart, and a crayoned ticket to heaven down the side of the soft satin cushion. She would have scrunched her smooth face at me—her version of “Oh, shush”—if she’d known I’d stay up all night composing four single-spaced pages about her to share at her funeral. She would have waved me off if I’d told her that writing four pages was harder than writing 40.
I tried to capture the essence of who she was, and I believe she would have appreciated it. There were the straightforward and glowing descriptors: She was the kind-hearted churchgoer, the lady who baked pecan tarts for gatherings and superhero-themed birthday cakes for neighborhood children. A devoted friend who still wrote letters to her childhood pen pal. The best grandma ever. Sunday school teacher. Thoughtful neighbor.
Yet, there was so much more I didn’t mention. I would have loved to tell everyone in that packed First Baptist Church, deep in the heart of Mississippi, that she was also a passionate liberal who sent me emails filled with typos and random slashes, written in all caps, proclaiming “THESE STUPID MEN ARE SENDING THIS COUNTRY STRAIGHT DOWN.” It was a side of her she never displayed openly, not during her life.
There was so much I wished to say. How she still held onto a grudge against my grandfather, whom she lost 33 years ago, and how she struggled to find her place in the lives of her busy adult children. Nai Nai and I often clashed. I encouraged her to express her true feelings, while she urged me to be gentler. She was a woman caught in the emotional constraints of her upbringing, still mourning her mother and grandmother’s deaths from when she was just a child, lacking the words to articulate those feelings. She was the young mother who lost her firstborn son when she was only 34, a loss that forever altered her connection with her remaining children.
I wanted everyone to see her through my eyes. Nai Nai and I shared a bond like few others. I pushed her to voice her feelings; she pushed me to be more compassionate. I insisted that Dr. Phil wasn’t a real doctor, and she shrugged it off. I rolled my eyes, and she simply smiled back.
Not everyone has the privilege of having their grandma around until they are 34, but she was my person, and I was hers. We always looked out for each other. When she was in her 70s, I playfully dubbed her “Grambo,” for her indomitable spirit. Standing over her coffin, reading from my neatly typed pages, I remembered how she often told me I was the only one who truly understood her. For years, I cherished that connection, but now I wanted to share it with everyone else.
The Poorest County in the United States
Nai Nai moved to Marks—a small town with a population aiming for 1,500—in 1935 from Chicago’s Chinatown to begin her life with my grandfather. Family stories say the entire town turned out to welcome her when she first arrived at the tiny train station. She often mentioned it wasn’t just the distance from her old life—the Chinese girl from a bustling city—that separated her; she was merely 20 years old.
Marks is the seat of Quitman County. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously visited in 1966, witnessing a teacher dividing meager lunches among impoverished students and moved to tears. In 1968, the year my mother gave birth to my older brother, Dr. King returned to Marks during his Poor People’s Campaign. In a poignant speech shortly before his assassination, he referred to “Quitman County, the poorest county in the United States.” Just over a month after his death, a symbolic mule train departed Marks, headed for Washington, D.C.
It seemed unlikely that Nai Nai would leave her urban roots for rural Mississippi, but she adapted, finding community among other Chinese families. This migration began during Reconstruction, as Chinese immigrants opened grocery stores catering to black customers, avoiding the back-breaking labor expected of them. My grandfather was one of them, having come to America alone at 14, joining family in Marks to open Wing’s Grocery Store.
I spent my childhood visiting Marks from Los Angeles, becoming familiar with its squat houses, parched lawns, and the sagging Main Street lined with empty stores. Yet the shanties with paper-covered windows and no electricity jolted me back to reality. Marks often felt like a movie set of a Southern town, filled with characters in costume.
On one visit, my brother and I entered a dimly lit drugstore, where the pharmacist scrutinized us before stating, “You must be some of the Wings. Are you Virginia’s kids?” At that time, my mother hadn’t lived there for over 30 years. While it was easy to identify us as “some of the Wings” due to our appearances, the fact that he knew our family and which branch we belonged to highlighted the closeness of the community.
In my mother’s youth, Marks was a place of segregation, with separate water fountains and schools. She recalls elderly black men tipping their hats as she walked by. Even today, the town is accessed only by flat highways flanked by cotton fields.
In Marks, the Chinese community enjoyed a unique acceptance. Nai Nai and my grandfather raised six children while running their grocery store at the edge of “colored town.” Eventually, they moved from an apartment behind their store to the house on Elm Street, situated in the white section of town. Being Chinese gave them a modest standing above being black in the segregated South. Due to a mix of social dynamics and a relatively tolerant community, my grandparents were well-respected and successful. Their family produced mayors, landowners, and business leaders. In nearby towns, Chinese children faced expulsion from white schools, but in Marks, they experienced a form of acceptance that was not always guaranteed elsewhere.
A Family Gathering to Celebrate Life
The night before Nai Nai’s funeral, our extended family—including my mother, her surviving siblings, and all eight of us grandchildren with our partners and children—took over a Comfort Inn in Clarksdale, the nearest “big” town just 18 miles away. The cousins from Clarksdale prepared catering trays filled with homemade soy sauce chicken, barbecued pork, and sweet strawberry trifle.
We folded funeral programs and prepared to honor her wishes to sing “How Great Thou Art” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. We set up breakfast tables to assemble small envelopes filled with coins and coffee-flavored candies to distribute at the cemetery—a sweet tradition meant to bring comfort and luck.
We pulled out photos, creating collages that captured our memories with her. From young Nai Nai modeling in Chinatown to family gatherings in the yard of their house, we relived moments that spanned generations. There were pictures of Nai Nai with her firstborn, Tommie, who tragically drowned in a nearby lake in 1949, and cherished snapshots of each grandchild as they entered the world or graduated from school. I can still picture her walking down the aisle at my wedding, flanked by my mother and Nai Nai herself, just seven months before her passing.
In her memory, we came together to share laughter, tears, and the stories that defined our family, ensuring that her legacy lived on in each of us.
For more insights on home insemination and related topics, check out our other posts about navigating this journey. Resources like this one are great for understanding pregnancy and home insemination, while Make A Mom offers a comprehensive at-home insemination kit that you might find useful.
Summary
This article reflects on the life and legacy of my grandmother, Nai Nai, who moved from Chicago’s Chinatown to the small town of Marks, Mississippi. It explores our unique relationship, her contributions to the community, and the challenges she faced as a Chinese woman in the segregated South. Through family gatherings and cherished memories, we celebrate her spirit and the values she instilled in us.