The Guardian

My mother and I speak different languages. Technology has brought us together | Jessie Tu

Writing letters to my mother feels liberating – even if simple sentences often get lost in translation
‘I hadn’t been able to tell her what I wanted out of life. How I felt when I fell in love and when I fell out of love and all the emotions in between, because I had no words for them in Mandarin’ Photograph: DaniloAndjus/Getty Images

Last week, I wrote a letter to my mother on my computer. It began as an enumerate sort of text, detailing my day – I woke up, I went to yoga, I ate a bowl of porridge, I drove to work – but then quickly spiralled into an unbiddable series of paragraphs about my views on gender politics, feminism and the dire state of our country’s incarceration system. 



I highlighted the text, then cut and pasted it into Google

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