Ms Catherine Yiu’s reflection is written upon having read Shaun Tan’s The Arrival (2006), in relation to the theme of immigration and personal experiences.

Hi Dr J,

How are you? 

Work is busy, though I had a couple of slower weeks, and managed to pick up some of the comics you recommended and read them.

I just finished The Arrival today and the one thing that stood out to me is its form. Without using a word, it really ties back to the theme of communication not through letters, but pictures and gestures, which is what most immigrants, who first arrive at a foreign country with no or little mastery of the language, would usually do. My family and I immigrated to Malta when I was young, and we had contact with a small group of Chinese immigrants there, some of them, especially those who just arrived, were not fluent in English and so had to resort to simple sentences and gestures sometimes. For my family, my parents spoke some English, but couldn’t be considered fluent, so at times we had to resort to some pointing and gesturing too. I was still young, so my English was not advanced enough to help the adults with some of the conversations they had with the locals. The initial struggle of trying to find a job depicted in the book would also ring true, I presume, to a lot of immigrants. My family left Malta in the end because they didn’t let us become permanent residents, and with the non-existence of our citizenship, my parents could not work there. 

Despite the ‘hardship’ (I bet my parents had it worse than me), I still managed to make some friends there, and I think the connection and helping hands shown in the book also rings true to a lot of people who have had experience of immigrating to a new land. Sometimes just a stranger helping you out when you can’t find a place, or the cashier you meet in the supermarket you frequent, or the vegetable seller who always has his van parked at the exact spot on a certain weekday afternoon, they may seem like figments and fragments to me now, but they still exist in my memory. I think this book might have done the same to a lot of readers, and they might not even have been an immigrant themselves, but somehow, some things seem to echo. Sorry, this does seem a bit like an overly rosy picture, not the usual analytical way to look at it… But it’s dreamlike, like the illustrations in the book, and that’s what dreams are about. You soften the edges, and the picture becomes less harsh to look at.

Bio of the Author: Ms Catherine Yiu majored in BA(Hon) English Language and Literature and graduated from BU in 2013. She has been working in the education sector after graduation and likes to journal and write in her spare time.