I am an Asian American designer, born to two immigrant parents. As a child, my earliest memories of community were in Chinese American restaurants. For my parents, these restaurants were amongst the few places they could experience a sense of belonging. As I have grown older, I have inherited the same longing for the warmth these restaurants have once provided for them. However, the same restaurants I ate at as a child would close, either because owners would retire or would not afford to run under the increasing rent. In closing their doors, I would find cold, corporate storefronts moving in, pushing out institutions that would once foster an accepting environment.
This frustration inspired me to create the broadside Won't You Remember Me? using letterpress, hand-set poetry, linoleum cuts, and polymer plates. The composition depicts linoleum-cut eyes and a hand overlapping a drawing of a former Chicago, Chinese American restaurant, King Wah Lo. Lines of poetry frame these illustrations:
Won't you remember me?
Buried frame lied to waste
Neon beam, naked body
New name replaces mine–
Thumping concrete, broken softly.
With these words narrating the interaction between body and building, the layering illustrations suggest a departure of the restaurant from the figure's grasp, blurring the lines in determining whether the building is an abstract memory, a tangible place, or a person. Unfortunately, not much documentation of King Wah Lo exists. My only reference to its presence belongs on a singular postcard preserved online. In response, I have attempted to pay homage to a long-forgotten restaurant while memorializing my yearning and grief in holding onto a memory.
I believe letterpress is the perfect medium for this broadside, as the practice mirrors my desire to keep community institutions that almost feel alive. It is dire to preserve letterpress history and to transform its legacy. Although the practice is obsolete in the modern era, it facilitates a welcoming environment for affected printmakers, like the community restaurants foster for immigrants in the United States. Perhaps "immigrant printing" initially existed out of necessity in the past to assimilate in a new, foreign country. However, as an immigrant child and a letterpress printer, I hope to transform what immigrant printing looks like and preserve a history of community and artmaking for all walks of life.
