FLASH MEMOIR BY: Myo Kyaw
ARTIST STATEMENT: This is my first semester at City Tech. This was written in response to a narrative essay assignment for ESOL21W: Intermediate / High Intermediate Second Language Writing. The prompt asked students to write a story about an issue that occurred around the generation gap in my life.
ABOUT THIS PIECE
By Prof. Rachel Gertzog
I encouraged Myo to submit his piece for its organic use of the literary devices we’ve explored this semester. Through figurative language, Myo has found his authentic voice. His portrayal of the loneliness and pain of a rootless life since leaving home deeply moved me. His challenges represent those many students face in pursuing their dreams of coming to America.Â
One year after COVID ended, I saw my mother cry for the first time.
We had a massive fight because she saw me playing mobile games again. A son doing nothing to help the family to earn money. She asked me, “Can this game build a future?”
I stood my ground for the first time. I told her I could make more money than she imagined. I ran into the night.
I did not know then that leaving home would last for years.
After I left, I started working as a junior site engineer at a construction site in Myanmar. The work was difficult. I just earned a hundred dollars for a month, without any days off. It was not enough for my dream of moving to America.
I sold all my digital gaming items. Years of hard work in the game, to pay for my visa and ticket.
Because I was a good gamer, I had a network of friends online who helped me navigate my way to the U.S. But me and my friend got scammed when I arrived in California.
At this moment I wanted to give up my life, but I remembered what my goal was. I moved to New York. I worked as a sushi chef in a grocery store. I didn’t take a day off.
My life is very different from my past. To pay for my credit cards and send money home, I am working sixty hours a week as a chef in a Chinese restaurant.
This April, while my country celebrates the Water Festival and the traditional New Year, I am far away. On my phone, I see photos of my friends back home for New Year, but I stay in the heat of the kitchen to work.
I feel very lonely in the noise of New York.
I stopped playing games. I focused completely on the Civil Engineering studies my mother always wanted for me. A friend who helped me to move here once told me, “The game didn’t gave you a future, so don’t let it take away your mother.”
He made me realize that her lecture, the one that started our fight, actually came from a place of deep love. I call her on FaceTime every single day now, and we don’t talk about the fight anymore.
I finally understand that money and success are not the real treasures in my life. I will have the income, I have the City Tech degree, and I have the “success.”
But I am still counting the days until I can trade all of it for a single moment to see my mother smile not through a glass screen, but face-to-face, and to finally hold the person who saved my life.
