Children of Exile

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. retraces the ancestral journeys of David Chang and Raúl Esparza, whose families fled their homelands, leading them to find lost parts of themselves along the way.

Raul learns about his maternal great-grandmother Rosalita’s arrival in Cambridge, Mass. to attend a six-week summer school

“The government instructed the Cuban Embassies of Madrid and London to Hunt me down and send me back to Havana”: Raúl reads from the transcript of his grandfather’s congressional testimony after he was forced to defect to America when his wife fled Cuba.

“My mom grew up in a castle, and my dad’s side is basically just hustlers”: David Chang describes being aware of his parents’ vastly different backgrounds, but also having a deeply-rooted sense that he shouldn’t ask questions about their upbringing.

“I remember pretty early on there was a distinct difference between white people food and the food that my mom would make,” David Chang says about his mother’s culinary influence on him.

David Chang reacts to reading his great-grandfather, Woo Sang Yong’s application to Yale Divinity School. Yong left his wife and his 7-year-old son behind in Korea to study in the U.S.

“They really did think, ‘New government, new hope, new chance’ “: Raul Esparza describes his father’s and his uncle’s disillusionment with the new Castro regime in Cuba as it became more and more repressive.