Daughters of Hart-Celler on “The Heart Sellers” at the Unicorn Theatre

Through the stories of its young female characters, Jane (Hong Jae Ha) and Luna (Luningning Ignacia Mangahas de la Rosario Bustos), Lloyd Suh’s “The Heart Sellers” shines a light on the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, which repealed the discriminatory quotas that had long effectively barred immigration from Asia.

This weekend, almost sixty years after the signing of the Hart-Celler Act, a group of local Asian women attended the opening night of the Unicorn Theatre‘s “The Heart Sellers” (a stellar production starring Dri Hernaez and Un Joo Christopher, directed by Vi Tran). When the group met afterward to discuss the play, their responses were deeply emotional and animated, informed by their personal immigration experiences.

Eileen Rivera
Actor – @eileenlrivera
Birthplace: Queens, NY
Family Origin: Philippines

Eileen’s parents, Frank and Jean, arrived in 1968 to Queens, NY, where Eileen and her brother Nick were born. Eileen is a founder of the Asian American Performers Action Coalition and an accomplished actor of stage and screen. KC Chiefs fans may recognize Eileen from this commercial in which her hair is shampooed by none other than Patrick Mahomes.

My parents married in 1968 in the Philippines and came here shortly after so my father could go to school, meaning the character Luna is exactly my mother’s experience. I had no idea about Hart-Cellers. This play has been such a revelation — suddenly I’m understanding this is why my parents arrived when they did, and all those other Filipino families from that generation who lived around us in Queens.

My parents didn’t teach us kids Tagalog; they wanted us to assimilate. So my brother Nick and I were shocked when we traveled to the Philippines in 2005 to see our paternal grandmother, and she told us our father used to call and tell her he felt like a second-class citizen in the U.S. He died young, in the 1980s, in New York City. So all that time I had had no idea that was his experience.

Sia Joung
Artist – @siajoung
Birthplace: Jinju, South Korea

Sia’s family arrived in Cedar Falls, Iowa, in 2003. Picking up English faster than their parents, Sia and her siblings became the family’s translators, a common experience for immigrant children. Sia studied painting at the University of Iowa and received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis. She teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute.

In Korea, we lived in a big modern city near Seoul, so it was disappointing to find myself in a small town in Iowa that didn’t have a subway, with internet that was so slow. We were the only immigrants. There was a lot of bullying: go back to your country, you smell like garlic. But it didn’t hurt as much as it might have because I was emotionally detached from the place. I thought: I would rather get to eat the full Korean meals my mother makes us for breakfast and smell like garlic.

For a long time, I kept wondering when I could go back to Korea. I just felt I didn’t belong. That process of assimilation was a gradual process, almost invisible at times, but it changed how I identify myself. It’s been over 20 years since I moved to the US. Kansas is home for me and my family and I feel truly belong here. Those early years of struggle were transformative and reshaped who I am in many ways.  

Liên Kim Nguyen
Environmental Manager / Geologist
Birthplace: Denver
Family Origin: Vietnam

Liên’s father, Cong, came to the US as a young teenage refugee from the Vietnam War, which he survived by hiding in the jungle and escaped on a small fishing boat. Cong’s struggles continued in his new country; he was in and out of prison for most of Liên’s childhood. Liên was raised in rural Missouri by her mother, with little contact with her father or her Vietnamese heritage. 

Growing up half Vietnamese in a small farming town, raised only by the white side of my family, I knew what it meant to stand out, yet rarely ‘seen’. In the play, Luna’s sense of marginalization comes not only from being an immigrant but also a woman, who must navigate a world where power often is in the hands of men. Growing up, watching my mother as a single parent, I learned the impact of power imbalances. So the characters’ wishful talk about finding a way out resonated. 

Luna’s fear of not being able to fully connect with her future children, her family back home, the people in her new home – that’s what I’ve felt. Nothing quite feels like home. I’m searching for my community, and I think it’s always going to be a search. “The Heart Sellers” reminds me that perhaps the search itself is a form of belonging.

Sunyoung Park
Artist – @syyris
Birthplace: Masan, South Korea

After earning her BFA and MFA in ceramics from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Sunyoung came to the U.S. in 2018 to pursue further graduate studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. A 2021 Belger Arts Center Artist Residency brought Sunyoung to Kansas City, and in 2023 she received a Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award.

When I first got here, in Carbondale, there were almost no Korean people. But I was here to learn and expand my art work. And then I started to feel: what’s the point of my life? I have big goals, but still, I want to stay connected to people. And dating, there were no Asians, only white guys. They’re good people but sometimes somehow it feels hard to be genuine. It’s something not really fully connected, without cultural similarity, that context.

My grandma passed away during the pandemic. It was such a tragedy in my life. And it kind of like triggered all these thoughts: Like my parents, they’re getting so old, and I want to spend more time with them. There is more than my work. There is life. So what do I do? Do I go back to be with them? It’s always like back and forth.

Bety Le Shackelford (Tina’s daughter)
Actor & Founder of Hella Good Deeds
Birthplace: Long Beach

Tina Le (Bety’s mom)
Speech Pathologist
Birthplace: Hue, Vietnam

Following the Fall of Saigan, Tina’s family had less than an hour to pack and flee. Instead of practical essentials like clothing, 16-year-old Tina chose to fill most of her small bag with her prized stamp collection.

Tina: Next April it will be 50 years of living in the U.S. The characters in this play, they still have a country to go back to, but we don’t. Vietnam is not my country any more. We already lost it. It’s not the same.

Bety: I didn’t experience immigration first-hand but what made me emotional was remembering the stories my mother told me, the challenges I know she went through, the paradox of feeling safer than you were in the place where you, left but not entirely safe emotionally. Growing up in California and then living in New York, moving here to KC was actually what made me feel for the first time that I stood out because I was Asian. I would leave a store and realize, Oh I was the only Asian there. During the pandemic, I did start to feel unsafe, and even wondered if people could tell I’m Asian when I put on my mask.

Juliana Tran-Castillo
Philanthropy Manager
Birthplace: Olathe, KS
Country of Family Origin: Vietnam

Juliana’s parents, Giac & Kim Tran, fled Vietnam with her brother Steve in the 1970s. After stops in Guam and Louisiana, they landed in Kansas City, where Juliana and her sister Jennifer were born.

I always wonder about my mom’s journey. This idea in the play of having a dream of America, but when you get here, you’re just stuck in the house, still dreaming. Growing up, ours was the only Vietnamese family we saw in Olathe. And even after we moved to Dallas to be around more Vietnamese people, I still felt outside, because I didn’t speak Vietnamese. As an adult, I started to realize how much I was wanting to get connected to my roots.

Although my brother was born there, out of all of my siblings, I’m the one who is most interested in wanting to try and learn the language and how to cook and just really immerse myself in it. My connection to my Vietnamese culture is so important to me, and this play made me feel so emotional, because it reminded me how hard it feels to hold on to things like identity, culture and community, when things are constantly changing.

Adeline Yeh, Ph.D.
Applied Economist
Birthplace: Pittsburgh, PA

Adeline’s parents met at Carnegie Mellon University as the only two Taiwanese students in their Ph.D. cohort. Shortly after Adeline and her brother were born, the family moved back to Taiwan, in part because her parents worried an American upbringing would distance their children from their culture and language. When Adeline came to the U.S. for graduate studies, she chose Cornell University in upstate New York to experience snowy weather after 21 years on a subtropical island.

I’ve been here twelve years now. My friend taught me a phrase: international orphan. You no longer belong at home, but you’re not from here. I can’t express myself here as easily as in my native tongue. There’s all this push-pull: Do I stay here, do I go back? I think about the kids thing constantly: Would I raise my kids here? What language would I teach them? There’s good and bad, like: The education system in Taiwan is not ideal, it’s rigid and test-based. but on the other hand there’s no gun violence.

Fun fact: When I adopted my dog Umi in Taiwan in 2021 and flew her over to the U.S., my mom was worried that Umi wouldn’t be able to live comfortably here because “she won’t understand what other doggies are talking about.” Turns out Umi understands American dog language just fine.

“The Heart Sellers” runs through November 10th at the Unicorn Theatre. Audiences are invited to AAPI Celebration Night (cosponsored with NAAAPKC) on Wednesday, October 30, to enjoy pop-up local AAPI food and drink vendors, plus a talkback with the cast and creative team.