Chasing The Dream: "A Decent Home"

When housing on the lowest rung of the American dream is being devoured by the wealthiest of the wealthy, whose dream are we serving? America ReFramed documentary “A Decent Home,” addresses urgent issues of class and economic (im)mobility through the lives of mobile home park residents who can’t afford housing anywhere else. “A Decent Home” is the first documentary to focus on mobile home parks and the injustices faced by park residents. Director Sara Terry joins MetroFocus to talk about the film. We also talk to Empire Justice Center Senior Staff Attorney Kirsten Keefe about the legal rights protections New York legislators have in the works to support residents of the state’s 1,800 trailer home parks.

A Chinese American Tale

Award-wining author Ava Chin (Eating Wildly) traces her ancestors’ journey from China to New York City in a new memoir, “Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming.” Raised by a single mother in 1970s Queens, Chin knew close to nothing about the father who walked out on her. Driven by a need to fill the holes in her personal narrative, she painstakingly pieced together the beats of her family’s migration, coming up against a discrepancy that distorts many families like hers—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Eventually, Chin zeroed in on a single building in New York’s Chinatown that she learned housed multiple generations from both sides of her family.