Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art volunteer David Barnett has been contemplating Christine Wong Yap's What I Love & Miss. He writes—
I raised three daughters in a state of mobility. Early on, we frequently shuttled between our home in New Jersey and our cousins' and grandparents' homes in Canada. My kids were often immersed in the French Canadian language, food, and faith.
We lived in a diverse town in New Jersey where old money mingled with immigrants from South America. In school, half of the kids were Spanish-speaking. When one of my kids was in middle school and two were in high school, I moved them to Switzerland for a year. In Switzerland, German and French were the prominent languages.
A year after returning to New Jersey, I accepted a job near San Diego, and we shifted again. Moving from Metro New York, and all its energy, to a beach town where surfing and skateboarding rule.
So it was with our history in mind that I encountered Christine Wong Yap’s What I Love & Miss at the Marjorie Barrick Museum.
Yap asked twenty children who had recently immigrated to the U.S. two simple questions: “What is a place that you miss and why? What’s a place that you love and why?” She then asked them to draw a self-portrait and write about the place using a template she had provided.
The results of Yap’s query are framed and exhibited, allowing viewers to consider the children and their experiences. Visitors are invited to create their own responses, and leave them behind for the Museum to display.
The answers are what you might expect from a child, missing certain friends, foods, or even a favorite game of badminton. But they are telling. Missing school doesn’t just mean switching buildings; it means switching cultures, teaching methods, and languages. The children's comments run deeper. Kids adapt, persevere, and learn.
For the kids, the comforts of a new country are surprisingly ordinary—supermarkets, new foods, parks, and fast internet. One said they love fresh air and miss winter. Maybe it’s not winter itself, but the rituals it carries—the Chinese New Year, the Dongzhi Festival. Now, the Fourth of July joins their calendar of traditions.
Many expat children, while immersed in a new culture and geography, receive support from family, friends, or organizations, such as native language courses, affinity groups, or international schools.
After constant moves, changes in language and culture, young people begin to form what scholars call a “third culture”—an identity stitched together from all the places they’ve experienced, yet belonging fully to none (Pollock and Van Reken).
I imagine Yap’s children are future citizens of the world. First, taking tentative steps acclimating to their new environment. Then, through exposure, the support of “newcomer schools,” language immersion, and college, they learn over time to move between cultures and languages. Always observing and immersing themselves in the culture around them.
My children, now adults, cross cultural boundaries with ease. One is a middle school science teacher in Kuwait City and moves effortlessly between cultures. Another, a prosthetist, spent time in South America crafting and delivering artificial legs; the third is preparing for an adventure in Ethiopia.
Like Yap’s children, my daughters miss more than places; they miss versions of themselves in those places.
Citations
Pollock, David C., Ruth E. Van Reken, and Michael V. Pollock. Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds. 3rd ed., Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2017.
Wong Yap, Christine. “What I Love & Miss.” Barrick Museum of Art, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2025. Exhibition.
About the Author
David S. Barnett recently retired after a forty-year career in Information Technology, shaping systems for the pharmaceutical, organ transplant, and defense sectors. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from Kean University and a Master of Liberal Studies from Arizona State University. An intrepid traveler, he also volunteers at the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.
Image: Christine Wong Yap with students from Edwin and Anita Lee Newcomer Elementary, What I Love & Miss, 2022, Series of 20 portraits with calligraphy: social practice, drawings, inkjet prints. Photo courtesy Krystal Ramirez.