For 61 years, Ou Shee Eng’s tiny apartment in Seattle’s Chinatown was the heart a community of women. Possessing the rare ability to read and write Chinese, Ou Shee was the reader and scribe of everyone’s letters. What was happening in China while this circle of women lived quietly in America, and why did they never speak of it?
Join Katie on location at the Wing-Luke Museum in Seattle, with guest Elana Eng Lim to contemplate belonging, kindness, and the once-noble act of taking family secrets to the grave.
Read Elana Lim’s poignant essay “My Grandmother’s Hand” HERE.
Join us on our next women’s history adventure! TOURS OPEN NOW
courtesy Wing Luke Museum
courtesy Wing Luke Museum
courtesy Wing Luke Museum
courtesy Wing Luke Museum
photo by Katie Nelson
photo by Katie Nelson
photo by Katie Nelson
photo by Katie Nelson
photo by Katie Nelson
photo by Katie Nelson
photo by Katie Nelson
Elana Eng Lim was born in 1961 and raised in Seattle’s Chinatown. She received her BA from the University of Washington in 1983 and, after a successful career in Silicon Valley and Microsoft, she left to raise her two boys with her husband Randy. In 2017, they helped curate a Wing Luke Asian Museum exhibit, Apartment #507. She has recently finished writing a cultural memoir, American Chinese, about family and Seattle history.
Music featured in this episode included
“Lau Tzu Erhu” by Doug Maxwell; The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto; “Under the Moon” by Annette Hanshaw; “Spirit of Fire” and “The Sleeping Prophet” by Jesse Gallagher; “Popularity March” by Victor Band 1923 at the Library of Congress; “Long Road Ahead” by Kevin MacLeod; “Please” by Wayne Jones.” FDR’s Pearl Harbor speech is in the public domain.
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