Yue Li: Unlike the average Baruch Student, I actually grew up on a farm in Beijing chasing pigs and chopping chickens. My mother was a refugee because she took part in the 1989 Tian An Men Square Massacre. My father helped her escape out of China so he was put in jail for about a year. When he did finally come out, his mother passed away so he went back to his hometown, Guang Zhou. I was predominantly raised by maternal grandmother. I reunited with my mother at the age of seven in the United States. In 1998 when my grandmother passed away, I never really knew what death was until a part of me was taken away. The date I wrote the poem was ironically the exact date of the ten-year anniversary of my grandmother’s death.