Visual Art / September 29, 2026

My Mother’s Baggage Series (1996-1998)

In 1996, Flo Oy Wong began her suitcase series with“My Mother’s Baggage: Lucky Daughter.” This work of art presents her family story as a book stored inside in an American Tourister suitcase. Inside the suitcase, Flo examines her identity as the “Lucky Daughter” through family photographs and cut-out magazine text, inviting the readers to turn each “page” of her story as the lucky daughter in the family of six girls— the one who finally brought the family a son.

The suitcase series was expanded in 1998 with “My Mother’s Baggage: Paper Sister / Paper Aunt / Paper Wife,” which tells the story of her mother Gee Theo Quee’s immigration to the United States along with Flo’s three older sisters who were born in China. Flo noted, “My mother talked about it her entire life — her entrance, and how people suffered and what the Chinese went through. She’d elongate the story, embellish it, elaborate on it.” Each of the six suitcases serves as a “page” in the story which gradually reveals the many secrets that were held by the family upon their arrival and interrogation on Angel Island in 1933.

My Mother’s Baggage: Lucky Daughter (1996)

15” x 20” x 6”, mixed media (suitcase, white gloves beaded, tag, photos)

This is an autobiographical piece that talks about me as the unwanted sixth daughter of our family. Chinese culture favors males to carry on the family name. According to my sisters, when I was born my mother cried. So I felt it was time to make a piece of work about this baggage that I had been carrying around. “Lucky daughter,” according to some Chinese traditions, is the daughter who is born before the son, and I was born before my brother was.

My Mother’s Baggage: Paper Sister / Paper Aunt / Paper Wife (1998)

mixed media (six suitcases, varying in size, scanned photo images, magazine text, and a notebook to record viewers responses)

This installation consists of six suitcases, each a “page” in the story of Gee Theo Quee, the artist’s mother. Before leaving China, Wong’s mother studied “coaching papers” sent by her father in order to bypass the discriminatory U.S. immigration laws. In 1933, Gee Theo Quee left China and landed at Angel Island Immigration Station. When interrogated, she lied to the officials: she claimed to be her husband’s sister, the only way she could legally enter the country. Her daughters, also detained with her, then became her nieces. Later, Gee Theo Quee finally reunited with her husband in Oakland Chinatown. Wong’s mother became pregnant with the first of her American-born children. In order for that offspring to be considered legitimate, her mother married another man, “in name only.” Thus, during the course of her life, Wong’s mother became “paper sister” to her husband, “paper aunt” to her China-born children, and “paper wife” to another man, with whom she never even lived.

Descriptive text from 2001 exhibition, “Flo Oy Wong: Angel Island Immigration and Family Stories” at the Japanese American National Museum