Museum of Chinese in America

Yvonne Wong is a woman who grew up in Jamaica. She was born to a Chinese father and a Jamaican woman of mixed ancestry, African and European. Yvonne talks about growing up in Jamaica and her early recollections of living there. She recounts how her father was a gambler and lost his first business as a gambling debt. She further talks about how her parents different ethnicities led to different traditions and cultural values. Her father wanted her to work in the shop while her mother instilled the need for a good education. She went on to discuss the how she ended up in the states working at the UN. She discusses the question of ethnicity. She considers herself Jamaican because to her that encompasses all of her ancestry from both sides of her family. Jamaica has a very diverse ethnic background, in the 16th century Jamaica had the largest Sephardic Jew population. Trying to hide any part of your ethnicity is going to make a person feel uncomfortable so Yvonne believes that everyone needs to accept their heritage whether good or bad.