Larissa Lam: 0:00

I remember when we got married, and if you know anything about Chinese weddings, you like literally have to invite like everybody and your aunt, your uncle, your mother, your you know, your cousin, like you never met. So when we were coming up with the guest list, I asked him, I said, hey, is there anybody on your father's side that you want to invite to the wedding? And he said, no. I was like, what? Are you serious?

Crista Cowan: 0:21

Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Krista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. When you think of large populations of Chinese immigrants in the United States, you might think of places like New York or San Francisco with their Chinatowns. You probably don't think of Mississippi. My guest today is Larissa Lamb. She is a music executive and a singer and a songwriter, so she's been involved in the entertainment industry for her whole career. But a family trip with her husband and his father to Mississippi to learn more about their family story and background turned into her first foray into filmmaking. At the time, she was just filming the family trip for their own family memories, but several subsequent visits turned into a really beautiful documentary called Far East Deep South, all about her Chinese father-in-law's surprising connections to an entire community in Mississippi. Enjoy my conversation with Larissa Lamb. Larissa, I'm so excited you're here. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. I'm loving the movie. I've made it about two-thirds of the way through, and I was hoping to finish it before we talked, but my producers already told me that there's a zinger at the end, and uh she spoiled it for me so that we could have this conversation. But um I'm excited to go finish that tonight. So I would love for you to just tell me a little bit about yourself and and your career and your family, um, and you know, what happened before you got into this project.

Larissa Lam: 2:37

Well, um, I actually was in the music industry for many, many years. Um I started out as uh an executive at a record label and then became a music artist, um songwriter, and I'd written music for film and television. I even hosted a talk show um at one point. Uh so I actually was not a documentary filmmaker before this whole journey happened. But 11 years ago, um, I went on a fateful trip to Mississippi with my husband and his family. And I had grown up in California all my life. I'd never been in Mississippi. And we went to go visit his grand, my husband's grandfather and great-grandfather's grave site. And I thought we would put some flowers on the grave, go back to California and never go back. And what ended up happening is what if unfolds in Far East, Deep South, our documentary, because the way things unfolded, one from the family discoveries and the history that my husband and my father-in-law, Charles, never knew about the about their family, um, was kind of amazing. And then on top of that, the history of the Chinese in Mississippi and even the United States that we don't really learn about in school was something that also struck me. And that's why I was compelled to make a movie and ended up coming into a whole new career as a documentary filmmaker and genealogist and historic public historian.

Crista Cowan: 3:57

Yeah, you all have to kind of put it all together to get something like this created for sure. Now, Mississippian Chinese, that's not something you usually hear put together, but you grew up in Southern California where there's a lot of diversity, a lot of different cultures in a lot of those communities. And so that phrase, you know, where are you really from? Um, was that something you grew up hearing or something that, you know, happened to your husband as well in his experience?

Larissa Lam: 4:25

Absolutely. Um, it's something for many of us who are of Asian descent. And I would even extend that to being something where a lot of our Latino, you know, Latina brothers and sisters also experience that where someone with an Asian face or someone who is uh maybe brown, if you know your Middle Eastern Arab heritage, people's assumption is, oh, you must be a new immigrant. You must not be from here. And so I used to travel extensively with a singing group and even as a as a as a solo touring artist. And a common question I would get is, where are you from? And of course I'd say, uh, I'm from LA. You know, I was born and raised in Southern California. And then they go, No, no, no, no, you know, where are you really from? And then I said, Well, I'm from this little town called Diamond Bar. You may not have heard of it. It's outside of LA. No, no, no, where are you really, really from? And I and what they would mean is, like, well, where's my family from, my parents? And they made the assumption that my parents were from another country. In my case, it was actually true. My parents were immigrants. They were born in China, they were born in Shanghai, and then went over to Hong Kong and then eventually came over to the United States as graduate students. But the fact that they assumed that I also was not born here was, you know, in some ways, I wasn't clear at the time that it was kind of a racist remark. But but I, you know, I think of it more as racial bias, because I think sometimes when we say, like, oh, that's racist, like it, you know, people aren't trying to be harmful. They're not trying to insult me, but it's just people's biases and subconscious assumptions. Whereas someone with a European heritage background who's, you know, white presenting may not get that same question. If somebody gets asked, like, you know, who's white, hey, where are you for really from? And you say, like, Cleveland, Ohio, like nobody blinks an eye. You know, what if I say in my in my in my uh husband's family's case, as we discovered in the film, they say Cleveland, not Ohio, but Cleveland, Mississippi, then people go like, no, no, where are you really from? And it turns out that my husband's heritage actually stretches back not just to China, but to Cleveland, Cleveland, Mississippi.

Crista Cowan: 6:32

So amazing. So uh tell me just a little bit about uh your husband. Like how did the two of you meet? How long have you been together? Um, you know, did you know anything about his family before you started on this journey?

Larissa Lam: 6:44

Let's see how much time we have now. Just kidding. Yeah. Uh there's a he said and a she said version. So you get my version. I love that. So my husband Baldwin, um, who is the subject uh and his family of Far East Deep South. Um, he's from, he was uh born and raised in um San Francisco and then Sacramento, is where he spent a lot of his uh formative years in school. And so he's a Northern California boy. I'm a Southern California girl. Uh, we are both of Chinese heritage. And uh long story short, we have some friends who kind of sort of introduced us. He's a rapper, actually. Before he went into producing films about it, this uh Asian American history, um, he was a mechanical engineer who also rapped about dim sum and thermodynamics. So he's he uh goes by the moniker only one, uh only W-O-N. And so you can find some of his music videos that are very clever and funny on on YouTube. And I was a singer, a singer songwriter. And so, you know, sometimes people go like, hey, here's a Chinese American rapper. You're a Chinese American singer. Maybe you guys should get together. And a lot of times, like it just it like doesn't always work just because it sounds good. But in our case, it actually ended up d working out. And uh people jokingly call us the Asian Jay-Z and Beyonce. That's amazing. And how long have you been together? Uh, we've been married 17 years, and we have a 12-year-old daughter uh who is getting to grow up and learning about her family history that she never knew. Uh, because my husband, I, you know, back to you one of your original questions. So my husband really only knew a little bit about his mom side of the family. His mom was born and raised in Hong Kong and came over to marry her his father. Um, all he really knew is that his father came over from China when he was 14, and he didn't really know anything much more um about it, except for later on in his life, he heard rumblings about grandfather being a Mississippi. But I I remember when we got married. And if you know anything about Chinese weddings, you like literally have to invite like everybody and your aunt, your uncle, your mother, your, you know, your cousin, like you've never met. So when we were coming up with the guest list, I asked him, I said, Hey, is there anybody on your father's side that you want to invite to the wedding? And he said, No. I was like, What? Are you serious? Like, I was like, really? There's no one on your father's side. And it's like, no, you know, my dad doesn't really talk about it. And I don't I've not really met anybody on my dad's side of the family or remember them. So he's like, I, you know, I don't want to push the issue. I'm like, okay. So I was like, great, that's less people to pay for, all right. Um, but I did think it was odd, and it wasn't until um several years later, um, in 2004 2014, when we went to Mississippi for the first time, as I mentioned, to go visit the graveside of his grandfather and great-grandfather, that I realized why we didn't invite anybody from my father-in-law's side, is because he really didn't know a lot of the history and there was a lot of pain attached to it because he had come over to the United States with only his grandmother and pretty much hadn't seen, had had never met his father, um, except when he was uh one year old. And that was kind of the story that we ended up uncovering.

Crista Cowan: 10:06

So, what was the like the catalyst, the moment that you guys decided to take this trip to Mississippi? Like, where did that desire come from?

Larissa Lam: 10:16

Part of it is my daughter was born. Um, so my daughter was born in 2013, and we took a trip on 2014. The year my daughter was born was actually my my my mother and father-in-law's uh 40th anniversary. So they thought, oh, we should do something special. Uh, we had to delay the trip a year because I was pregnant, but they thought, like, you know what? We kind of knew grandpa was like buried in great, you know, in Mississippi. Maybe it'd be great for all of us as a family to go because nobody in the family had been there before. And so um we thought, okay, this is a great, maybe a great opportunity. Um, my husband was thinking, you know, it'd be great to learn a little bit more about our daughter's heritage, you know, now that you're born. I mean, I think when you become parents, you start to be more aware of things like that. Whereas maybe growing up and when you're in your youth, like you don't really think about where your family came from and why it's important.

Crista Cowan: 11:09

Yeah, that's so, so true. Here at Ancestry, we call those life moments of truth, right? There's these moments that people just naturally turn to the past and start to look at, you know, what they don't know and where their gaps are and what stories they do know and want to make sure they pass on. And things like the birth of a child or when a parent is diagnosed with, you know, dementia or Alzheimer's, or you know, when a sibling passes away. Those are these moments where you're like, oh, wait, there are things I don't know or I need to hold on to. So, so making kind of a pilgrimage like that is a really beautiful way to honor that moment, both of their anniversary and your daughter's birth. I'm gonna absolutely encourage everybody to watch this film, but um I would love to have you just give us all a little synopsis of it, um, and then we'll dive into a few of the few of the details.

Larissa Lam: 12:00

Yeah. Um, a Chinese family walks into Mississippi and no, uh, it kind of was like that. I I mean, I think what the film is, is about our Chinese-American family taking this pilgrimage to Mississippi and uncovering the family history that they never knew and really the American history that they also didn't know about the Chinese in the Mississippi Delta during Jim Crow. Uh, and you see the the discoveries as it's happening with our family. Um, so we we kind of go into it very blind, like not knowing like we'd ever been to Mississippi. And so it's that fish out of water in some ways. We have a family from California uh that happens to be Chinese American going to Mississippi. And really, my father-in-law ends up learning about the father he never knew because his father had passed away when he was very, very young. And because this is a slight spoiler, but eventually we find out that the Chinese Exclusion Act also played a part in why their family wasn't able to be reunited either here or in China, uh, because things got very, very complicated. Um and you'll have to watch to learn a little bit more about those complications, but um, it's so it's not just the it's not just a story about Mississippi and the Chinese there, but also kind of larger implications of policy and and how we see immigrants and really how those forces have kind of shaped our, not just our country, but even the individual units of families.

Crista Cowan: 13:35

Yeah, and how families are able or not able to stay connected and to know their own history and stories. Absolutely. Now, you uh you know, you you didn't come into this as a filmmaker with any training in that. So, like this is your first film. Uh what were some of the like challenges that you faced or things you had to learn fast in order to make this happen?

Larissa Lam: 14:00

Well, one of the challenges, because um we were kind of trying to piece together uh the past or even finding as many people that knew um Baldwin's family, my husband Baldwin's family, was people were getting old, uh, you know, and so the clock was kind of ticking to get people while they were still alive. And it's been 11 years now since we went to that first trip. And sadly, uh, I'd say like half the people we interviewed have already passed on. So we were really grateful that we were able to find as many people as we did. But there were, there was one person we were supposed to interview. And, you know, sadly, he passed away before we were able to interview him, um, who had known Baldwin's grandfather, Casey Lou. And so that was certainly a challenge. Um, I think one of the other challenges was there's so much information that we ended up uncovering and so many wonderful stories and interviews that we did that we couldn't include all of them. And so trying to whittle it down to a cohesive story that was engaging, um, that didn't kind of bludgeon people over the head with information, uh, that was also a big challenge. And so there was definitely a lot of a lot of things left on the the cutting room floor. Um, and uh, you know, we we slowly or surely putting together deleted scenes and hopefully more more clips that we can just share on social media.

Crista Cowan: 15:20

Yeah, that's amazing. We we struggle with that with the stories that we uh you know hear here on the podcast as well, like how you edit it to to tell a story that's interesting, but there's always little snippets or nuggets or things that you're just like, oh, but I love that piece so much. Um, it it does make it a little bit of a challenge. Um, so you know, we mentioned, you know, earlier Chin, you know, Chinese and Mississippi aren't something that are usually said in the same sense. Can you give us just an idea of why uh your husband's family was in the Deep South?

Larissa Lam: 15:54

Yeah, what we ended up learning was that um after the emancipation proclamation, when um people were freed from slavery, um, there was now kind of a void left in the plantations, right? A lot of the labor force left uh Mississippi. And so they needed to replenish that. So after the Transcontinental Railroad was built in the 1860s, you know, word got around, hey, the Chinese was a cheap form of labor that we could import to maybe replace some of the labor that we lost on the plantations from the enslaved, the formerly enslaved um African Americans. And so uh there were Chinese that were recruited, the initial group of Chinese were recruited uh from other parts of the country and also directly from China to come in and uh be sharecroppers to work on the on the farms. Um, eventually they had to move uh out of that realm for a couple of reasons, because uh one, some of them were like, hey, this is a raw deal. This was not the riches that we were promised, and the the labor was difficult. But also the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted in 1882, which prevented Chinese labor uh from coming into the country to work these labor jobs. So um the loophole was that Chinese could be merchants, and so a lot of them ended up becoming grocery store owners. In fact, in the Mississippi Delta, um, the majority of the Chinese um, you know, uh in the early 1900s to mid-uh 1900s were running and operating grocery stores. Um, and uh in some sense, grocery stores is a little bit misleading because many of them were turned out to be general stores. They sold more than just groceries. Uh, because of the segregation and the the intense discrimination, a lot of white merchants didn't want to serve the black population. And so the Chinese kind of served a purpose in in terms of being able to cater to um the the black clientele when a lot of white uh stores refused to serve them.

Crista Cowan: 17:53

Yeah. And and that brings up an interesting point, which is you've got these people living in close proximity to each other, but really kind of isolated because of because of the you know prejudicial segregation. And so, you know, as this uh Chinese population is brought in, you've got still some of the black population there. What were the relationships between those two communities? How did they interact? Were there tensions in the middle of the Jim Crow South?

Larissa Lam: 18:22

Yeah. Yeah, in the in the in the earlier decades, there, the early 1900s, mid-1900s, um, it was actually a surprisingly um symbiotic relationship. You know, um they all kind of knew the rules of the South, right? The segregated South. Like a lot of the Chinese, uh, most of the Chinese at that time um couldn't live in the white neighborhoods just like the African Americans couldn't live in the white neighborhoods. Um, and so they they were in community together. There was a mutual respect between the communities because um, you know, uh an African American can walk through the front door of a Chinese establishment and hang out as long as they were welcome to hang out as long as they can without feeling like they were being treated like a second-class citizen. And we interviewed many um people from the black community who shared about the fact that the Chinese establishments and and the people in their neighborhoods were in many places, in many senses, a safe place for them to be and gave them a sense of dignity when the white community really didn't give them um dignity. Uh, and there was a lot of bartering going on. There was also um credit that was um extended. I mean, sharecropping, uh sharecroppers would only be paid once or twice a year. And so um, if they did, you know, if they weren't able to get credit from the stores, and these are interest-free credit, there it was very much an honor system. You know, we heard from many of the Chinese grocery store owners, especially, and especially with a lot of the black community members, they're like, yeah, our family wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for the fact that, you know, we could just walk into a Chinese store and and they let us just take stuff on credit and just pay you back later, or just return or borrow stuff and return it later. And so there was this kind of the system that, you know, we don't really hear about in our history classes uh of this uh very much like mutual exchange. And they they all just kind of did what they could to kind of survive together under these very oppressive conditions.

Crista Cowan: 20:22

Yeah. And and I think people are a lot more familiar when we talk about the Jim Crow South, a lot more familiar with the laws and restrictions, both on the books and culturally, as far as what the the black community was and was not allowed to do. Did did a lot of those laws also apply to the Chinese community? Like you mentioned, they didn't get to live in certain neighborhoods, they couldn't do certain jobs, was there more?

Larissa Lam: 20:46

Yeah, um absolutely. And you know, it depended on the time period. You know, it was it was interesting because, you know, there's certain there were certain time periods where um Chinese were allowed to go to schools uh in in integrated white schools. And then, you know, there's a very famous Supreme Court case called Lum versus Rice, where, you know, somebody in the neighborhood said, Hey, I don't want these Chinese kids in my school and had them kicked out because it was legal under separate but equal and under the segregated laws, right? And so then all of a sudden there becomes this this uh domino effect where a lot of other schools, like, oh, we can kick the Chinese out, we're gonna do that. And but it depended, you know, if some people like the Chinese, they would allow them in the schools. And so it really depended on people's attitudes and towards the Chinese. But um I've heard from many Chinese too, like they were denied medical services. Um, they were not allowed to swim in the public pools. In fact, I was talking to a gentleman just, you know, a few weeks ago where, you know, he was saying, like, yeah, we had to take the bus from one town to go all the way to another town so that we could use the pool, because in the town that they lived in, they were not allowed to the to use the public pool. So they had to take a bus like 40 minutes outside of their city just to go. To a swimming pool. And so those were very real struggles that segregation imposed. And the one that I actually, you know, included in my film that I thought was just, again, remarkable is cemeteries. Like you would just think in death. Why should it matter? But in a Jim Crow society and a very segregated mentality, even the association in death was not allowed. And so you had Chinese who couldn't be buried in a white or a black cemetery. They had to have their own cemetery. And in fact, the Jewish community was not always considered equal to white. And so they had a separate cemetery for the Jewish community too. So that's how heinous segregation was, that even in death, um, it was it was a way of life.

Crista Cowan: 22:49

Yeah. Well, the the weight of that, I think, for so many of us, especially those of us who are white, like we just don't, it's so invisible to us, um, which I think is the definition of privilege, right? That we don't have to confront that or face that. And so, you know, I'm sure there were prejudices and biases and racism that you faced, even growing up in Southern California, but to walk into Mississippi and to be so blatantly faced with it right down to the burial grounds is remarkable, is probably painful to confront that. Um, as you shared that experience with your husband, with his family, like how have they processed the emotions of that? Because for them, this connection is super personal.

Larissa Lam: 23:38

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that um was very interesting is my father-in-law Charles, um, he served in the Air Force. So he was very, very patriotic. And he was also very grateful, I think, to be in this country, uh, especially given um some of the political conditions in China, um, where he was born and and where he left. Um, and so when he, I think, discovered specifically that the Chinese Exclusion Act, a act of Congress that was passed into law in 1882 and then renewed uh a couple of times um and then became made permanent until um it was repealed in 1943. Um, you know, I think it it kind of it was a kind of a bittersweet realization that there were these forces bigger than him that separated his family. On the one hand, he kind of had more empathy for his father because part of what I think makes our story so compelling is that my father-in-law really thought his father had abandoned him when he came back to the US to work. I mean, he would work and send money over, but he kept questioning why did he have to leave me? He grew, you know, basically felt abandoned. And then when he realized that it was things like the Chinese Exclusion Act that made it very difficult for his family to come over. Um, and, you know, that there was this need to work in the you know the United States. Um I think it allowed him to feel a little bit more solace knowing that his father, and we also discovered, slight spoiler alert, some other things that pointed to the fact that, you know, his father did love him. Um, but I think it was bittersweet knowing that our country could do that. Um, at the same time, um he also understood the responsibility. Uh, you know, at first he's a very, very humble man, my my father-in-law. Um sadly, my father-in-law passed away last year. Um, but prior to that, you know, he was very, very vocal to me about like, you need people people need to learn about what happened with the segregation in in the South. And they also need to know what happened with the Chinese Exclusion Act so that it doesn't happen again. Um, and I think there was a sense, maybe growing up or, you know, spending more time in the United States, initially of being like, oh, this is really hard history. We don't really want to talk about that. It's a very common sentiment from immigrant communities of not wanting to rehash the painful trauma of being an immigrant and the and the racism and discrimination that maybe we experience as a community. But for him, uh he understands like the education is important. But but for us, it's also education through empathy. You know, it's it's my job isn't to make necessarily somebody who is non-Asian or or somebody specifically who was white feel guilty. What I hope it does, it it creates empathy to say, like, you know what, we are human and there are mistakes that we've made in, you know, as a as a country, you know, as individuals. Um, and yet hopefully moving forward, we can be better and that we could hopefully identify um how we can make future generations feel like they belong.

Crista Cowan: 26:47

Yeah, and stories to me are one of the most powerful ways to look somebody in the face, to hear their story, to see their humanity, to connect and to feel that empathy. And so the fact that you've chosen this story to share in this way, um, I just think it's so, so powerful. You know, the there's also power and experience in going to the place, in walking the ground, in listening to the stories of the people in the community as well that surround the story, that make it more real, that make it more tangible. Um, but for genealogists, it's not just about walking in the place or hearing the stories, it's also about the archives and about the records that prove the facts of the stories. Um and so you had the opportunity to visit the National Archives in San Bruno. I've been there a couple of times. I've worked with some of the people who work there. Um I'm a total archive nerd. Um, but that maybe is something that was not part of your life experience until you started diving into this story a little bit more. So tell me about your first visit to that National Archives branch in San Bruno.

Larissa Lam: 27:58

Yeah, I have to admit, I didn't know that archives could be such a valuable source of information. Um, so I'll I'll get I'll back up and tell you the story behind how we ended up in San Bruno. So um if people see Far East Deep South, they'll kind of see us visiting Mississippi uh for the first time. And chronologically that's what happened. Uh, we actually made a short film prior to Far Steep South called Finding Cleveland about Finding Cleveland, Mississippi, the first time. And we actually um, you know, did some film festivals, did some screenings and discussions around that film. And I remember we were in New York one time and somebody in during our QA session stood up and said, Hey, have you seen your exclusion files for your family? And uh Balda, my husband was like, What? And he's like, No. He's like, Oh yeah, like you could probably find them in San Francisco. And I had mentioned my husband was born and raised in San Francisco, grew up in Sacramento. And so he's like, What? So of course, then we went and contacted San Bruno, which is right outside of San Francisco. They they call it, you know, the National Archives of San Francisco, but it's technically in San Bruno, California. Um, and lo and behold, they found the records for my husband's family. And here we are going to Mississippi, uh, you know, journeying around the whole country, only to land back where we started. So, in in many ways, that journey became full circle. And in our film, you'll see us going to the National Archives and discovering those exclusion files for my husband's grandfather, Casey Liu, and his great-grandparents. And I had no idea that um there was this many documentation. I guess our government does keep very good records, you know, in the end. Um, and not just nationally. I mean, even when we went to Mississippi, it was amazing to find, you know, what other records we could find on a local, you know, level. Um, but in many ways, the discriminatory act of Chinese exclusion was a horrible thing. But the one silver lining is that it ended up giving us a paper trail of my husband's genealogy and family history in a lot of ways.

Crista Cowan: 30:10

Yeah, and that's that can be a gift that's yes, doesn't compensate, but but for sure it has value in and of itself. Um, I want to read this because you were quoted saying that your daughter and future generations would learn more about the vast struggles and contributions of Asians in America. I hope that we can broaden the way American history is taught and discussed so that it includes the Asian American experience, especially as it pertains to learning about the American South. Um, you made this film four years ago. Um, how do you feel about that hope now?

Larissa Lam: 30:47

Well, you know, I actually finished the film um 2020 right before the pandemic. Um but we, you know, it was released, it didn't release onto on PBS until 2021. Um it had a bit of a journey because, you know, the world was shut down and everybody was trying to figure out what was going on. Um, but I think what what ended up happening is uh through that anti-Asian sentiment that unfortunately and anti-Chinese specifically that crept up during um COVID, um, it made me realize how important our film was, even more so. Um, because going back to what we were talking about, that question of where you where are you from, where you really from, that question still gets asked. I mean, I probably have been asked that question a couple a couple of times this past year. Um, and it it goes to the sense that because we don't learn about the history of Asians in America that stretches back several generations, um, we have the sense that most Asians must be new immigrants and that they don't belong here. I myself, having been born and raised in the United States, didn't learn my own history of, you know, like the Chinese in the South, had no idea of that Mississippi history, which is why I made the film. I was like, more people need to know about this. Because in my mind, growing up, learning about the Civil War, learning about segregation, learning about the American South, like that was so American. It was such a pivotal part of American history. And I had no idea that people that uh had the same heritage as me were part of that history because we never saw it. You know, the way American history is taught is maybe we learn a little bit about the Chinese coming in for the gold mines, building the railroads, and then it kind of disappears from the history books. We'll fast forward to World War II and the Japanese internment camps. Um, and then we kind of disappear again, and maybe we'll talk about Vietnamese refugees immigrating. Um, but we've been here the whole time. It, you know, we didn't just come and leave. Um, some people did, but a lot of families came and settled and contributed to the United States. We just don't hear about the stories. And it's not just relegated to California or the major metropolitan cities where you think of Chinatowns, but it's in the rural South, it's in the Midwest, it's all over the country. And yet those stories haven't been told. And so I think it's so important for us to learn more about those contributions to American history because it it really gives not just the Asian American community a sense of belonging, but I think for people who view us from the outside, hopefully they'll see that there's a much larger contribution from our community than they realize.

Crista Cowan: 33:28

Yeah, so, so, so well said. And I love that you've put this movie out into the world to tell that story. Um, I think it's an important story that should be told, it should be heard, it should be retold. Um, uh a lot of my listeners are concerned about their own family stories. And so now as a filmmaker, um, as you think about your experiences capturing, you know, those discoveries on camera, um, you know, what did you learn through that that maybe if you had to do it over again you might do differently?

Larissa Lam: 34:01

You know, I think there's, you know, I I wish I had a bigger budget to make the film. And uh, you know, there's always there's always that um when when it comes to having more time um to be able to sit down with people um and talk. Uh I think, you know, one of the things that I think is really, you know, important that uh looking back is um just getting, this is a filmmaker thing, getting more B-roll, just capturing not just the interviews, but um the the surroundings, the because that tells a story too, whether it's the artifacts, and we did we did film a lot of artifacts whether we went to when we went to the the Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum. Um and in in some cases, I wish I had filmed more in people's homes of their photo albums, of those types of things, because that tells a story too. It's not just the oral histories, but it's the artifacts in in your in their home that that really uh is important. And and I think also just through this whole journey, um, and I'm doing this as I continue on with different storytelling um and different projects, is you know, understanding that one person's trash is another person's archive. And it and just the photos um and the documents. I mean, I mentioned my father-in-law passed away last year and my mother-in-law is like cleaning out everything, and there's certain documents, like, no, no, don't throw that away. At least take a picture of it first, because it's like, oh, it's his first like paycheck stuff. Like, I know it doesn't mean anything now, but it tells a story or like a certain letterhead or things like you just get documents and applications of like, no, no, no, wait, let's take a picture of it before we toss it. Because that document may not exist anymore. And it it again, it tells a story of what that person did, who they were, and the and the sign of the times too.

Crista Cowan: 35:53

Yes, yes. As we think about, you know, most of us aren't going to be putting our stories out into the world in the way that you did, but but that advice I think certainly applies. Take more pictures of people and places and things and record the stories, you know, before they're too late. Talk to the people. Like all of the things that you've learned through this experience can be applied, I think, to any of us who are even just trying to document the stories of our own families. Um, maybe not for public consumption, but but for the next generation. Um uh as you think about the film, do you have a favorite moment that we see on camera?

Larissa Lam: 36:29

Yes, um, and I will have to go with the spoiler alert. Uh I think it still has its power, even if we spoil it for your audience, but um, there is a pivotal moment where we find a very important book um in the museum. Um, it is a Bible. It is my um my father-in-law's father's, so you know, Bible. Um, and it it was such an emotional moment uh because uh, you know, I always say we could have found his dictionary and it wouldn't have held the same power. Um, and also because my father-in-law um had become a Christian and was a very faithful um churchgoer, it it had more weight because it was a Bible. Uh and and so that was a flood of emotions. Um, I don't even know if I honestly would have made a film if we had found a different book. Uh I know the history still would have been important, but because there was, it was almost like a sign from God for me. Like of all the books we could have found, that was the one we found that day in the museum. Um, and that's what unlocked us to go on this journey to discover so much more.

Crista Cowan: 37:42

Yeah. Larissa, I didn't think I was gonna cry. The emotion of that, like it's so moving. And to know that that's what ultimately maybe spurred you to do this project, I think is really, really beautiful. Is there a favorite moment that we don't see on camera?

Larissa Lam: 38:01

You know, it's related to that moment. Um, my father-in-law actually was sobbing for probably five minutes, like in the corner, kind of think just overwhelmed with emotion after we found the Bible. And my little daughter, who was like 15 months at that time, she was, you know, just a little over one year old, ran out up and hugged grandpa's leg. For some reason, we had some malfunction with her camera. Um, we didn't have we weren't actually making a, we didn't know we were making a film at that time. You know, we were just a family on vacation and we were, so we were capturing this moment. But in many ways, for whatever reason, there was an error on the camera. So that moment is only etched in my memory. But in and I'm kind of glad that maybe we don't have it because it was, it was that moment. I'm gonna get emotional thinking about it too. I it allowed my father-in-law Charles to have that moment to himself because it was, it was just, I think, the first time he had let out so many emotions. It wasn't just about the discovery of the Bible. I mentioned he felt like he had been abandoned by his father. It was in that moment, too, that he was probably in contact with one of the few items he'd ever seen of his father's. You know, he had he was left with a few photos that his, you know, great grand his grandmother had left behind. But like that was his father's possession. But also as we kind of went through this journey, it was just like all those years locking that up inside, locking all those complicated feelings of of you know, not knowing his father, not having his father around, really just was just this flood, flood, flood of emotions. And so um that's the part that we don't have on camera. Um, that I'm in many ways um glad that I could have we were able to inadvertently keep that for a private moment for my my father-in-law.

Crista Cowan: 39:56

That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us. Um, I think that's something that will resonate with the listeners uh of this particular podcast quite a lot because those are the moments that we hope for, that intergenerational connection and also the healing that just comes through discovering our own stories and the, you know, sometimes we have blinders on because of our own perspective on things. And when we start to see the truth of what really happened and those blinders start to fall off, I think there's some really beautiful healing that happens through that experience. So I'm so grateful that you were able to facilitate that for your father-in-law and and that he was able to have that experience. Um, what do you think is next, like in your in your family storytelling, in your family story discovery, now that your daughter's getting a little bit older, is she getting involved? What does that look like in your family?

Larissa Lam: 40:51

You know, what's interesting is um we were really focused on my father-in-law's side of the family. And after we finished Var East Deep South, my husband Baldwin found some old an old email from his uncle with a photo of his maternal grandfather. And it turns out, I'm sorry, his maternal great-grandfather, so it's my mother-in-law's grandfather. And it turns out he was in Colorado at one point. In fact, he was in Denver, Colorado. Um, he was born in China and he had returned to China. And so the doc and we found a photo and a document where he was talking with a lawyer trying to get back into the United States. This was in the like in 1903, 1904. So this was during the Chinese Exclusion Act. So we have a second uh instance on his mother's side of the family of the personal impact of the Chinese Exclusion Act. And we found out that he worked on the railroad. And then after working on the railroad, he ended up in Denver, Colorado. And I think he ran uh, I want to say he ran a dry cleaning store. And so we joke like one of our next projects might be Far East Rocky Mountains, because there's a whole like side of that story that we started to dig into. Um, we haven't still made it uh out to the Denver, Colorado. Uh, but that's been kind of this fascinating side to this family history where uh wait, there's more. It wasn't just one side of the family, it was actually both sides of the family, that his history and contributions to the United States. And then my next project that I'm working on is called Um Who's Afraid of Virginia Wing? And it expands on, uh, as I joke, the MCU, the Mississippi Chinese universe, where um we're learning, we're leaning into um her lineage. Um, she was born and raised in Marks, Mississippi, and um she's a Chinese American actress and singer uh still alive. She's 88 years young and uh became the first woman of color to be in the Miss Mississippi pageant, and uh was on a lot of the variety shows in the 1960s on like the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, the Today Show, um, and amazing performance theater. And so we're looking at a very different lens of, again, kind of this this extending this history of um Chinese in America and kind of showing the contributions and the and the arts in this case, and even with Virginia's own family, I've been helping her through her journey. Um, you know, her mother was born in Chicago, and um there's a whole history there of Chinese in in in Chicago that has also not been largely told. And so I'm kind of excited to not just tell stories about my family and my husband's family, but um others that we've encountered because I I think it's really important that we see like the depth. I mean, you know, think about all the stories of people, you know, how many stories have been told about the Civil War or the Revolutionary War or about World War II or people, descendants of, you know, soldiers from those eras. And so there's so many more stories to be told from um those of Chinese descent or of other Asian descent in this country, even stretching back to the 1500s, where we know Filipinos had had come, or even the First Filipino settlement in Louisiana in the 1700s, there's so many stories to explore that I think it's really important for people to realize that our family stories make up American history and world history.

Crista Cowan: 44:13

Yeah, absolutely. Um, the story of the Chinese Americans is part of the story of America. And so as we are marching through this America 250 series here on this podcast, um, your story clearly and beautifully represents the American story and this connection to the state of Mississippi. And as you think about the connection to Mississippi and the Chinese, um, you know, how does that how do you feel about Mississippi?

Larissa Lam: 44:44

You know, it's interesting because I'd always kind of thought of Mississippi and whatever was painted in film and TV and some of those stereotypes of it being uh, you know, like somebody's gonna crucify you on a cross with lynchings and you know, I mean that, and and that definit definitely did happen back in those days. Uh, but at the same time, I think um we have this kind of perception that, like, oh, there was only black and white. And so for me, that changed that perspective going there, knowing not just the Chinese. I mean, the next most populous group next to the African Americans were the Chinese, but there were also uh Mexicans that came in because the next wave of labor, once the Chinese left the plantations, you still need people to work on the farm. So where would you go? You went to Mexico to start to recruit migrant workers, and some of them also settled in the Mississippi Delta. You had people that were Lebanese that came over into the South that became small merchants. Um, and you had all sorts of different groups of people that ended up in Mississippi aside from just the black, white, the blacks and white and the Chinese. And so I start to realize that there was a little bit more diversity to Mississippi, which is really the story of America, right? The diversity of we are a nation, um, with the exception of the indigenous people. Like we are a nation of whether it's through um, you know, uh volunteer immigration or forced immigration, um, whether you were enslaved or you're a refugee, like that's the story of our nation. And and even those who seemingly, you know, chose to come to this country, a lot of times their forces, um, you know, in a lot of the Chinese case, there was economic strife and and civil war back in China that forced a lot of the Chinese to come over in the 1800s to find better opportunity and to find work when there was um a darth of opportunity in in China, especially the southern part of China. And so understanding, I think, that history, you know, makes it all the greater to understand that the United States was that land of opportunity for people. And so um we hope that it can stay that land of opportunity, um, even despite some of the darker sides and sadly um with the history of slavery and some of the discriminatory laws that we discussed. Um, hopefully we can grow from that. Um, and that the 250 anniversary can remind us of some of that and can include a lot of more of the history than has been told. Because I think to really understand America, you really need the full picture and not just part of the picture.

Crista Cowan: 47:14

Yeah, beautifully said, Larissa. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story with us. If people want to see the film and follow your work and more of what you have to come, what's the best way for them to do that?

Larissa Lam: 47:27

Um, if you want to learn more about Far East Deep South um and where it's playing, it's streaming on a lot of different platforms. Um, you could go to Far East DeepSouth.com. Um, you could watch it on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, um to uh Tubi, just to name a few PBS. Uh and of course, um, you know, if you also uh we a big part of our uh push with our film isn't just for the individual, but also for schools and education to be learning a lot of this history that we're discussing. You know, we have an education distribution deal through New Day Films. Um, and it's of our film is available on Canopy, but you can also go to New Day.com to find out how you can license and bring our film into your schools. And if you want to learn more about who's afraid of Virginia Wing, our next project about our Southern Belle, uh Chinese American actress, um, and her history, um you can go to VirginiaWingfilm.com to learn more about that um or any of our projects at giantflashlight.com. Um, our production company is called Giant Flashlight Media, and we hope to continue to shine a giant flashlight, a big spotlight on a lot of these hidden stories.

Crista Cowan: 48:34

Fantastic. Thank you so much. We'll be sure to put all of those URLs in the show notes. Larissa, thank you for joining me. Thank you for sharing your story and all the best in the stories you still have to tell.

Larissa Lam: 48:45

Studio sponsored by Ancestry.