How to Turn a Boy Into a Leaf

A Chinese boy with only scant knowledge of his own family's history feels rootless and insubstantial amongst friends brimming with confidence about theirs. Unaware of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its accompanying Chinese Confession Program, he's too young to know the truth, which may endanger his family. He fills in the blanks with comical misunderstandings about his real family members. As he grows, his curiosity remains unsated; he's hollowed out for what he longs to know, but doesn't. Years pass, and then he learns that his father has been a paper son from the beginning, entering the U.S. illegally as someone else. His mysterious and remote paternal grandfather in Yucatan, whom he meets occasionally in Tijuana, has been the invisible hand protecting his father all along.

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Years after his parents' and grandfather's deaths, the boy now grown old, travels to Yucatan to find his grandfather's grave. He discovers him in an unmarked pauper's grave. The truth shocks him and makes him question everything his strict, Confucian father has taught him. His discoveries yield clues resolving longstanding mysteries that his father has bequeathed him, starting when he was just a boy hungering for the truth. His experiences shine an unsparing light upon immigration injustice and hatred reserved for the Chinese alone, and the price it extracts from his family over two generations, even after repeal. Most of all, the story reveals, like a rock tumbler rolling for decades, the jewel of devotion that transcends the family's long, at times crushing separations, and transforms their suffering into a beacon of enduring resilience.