"I tell everybody I love them": Chan is free and has come home
After eighteen years in prison, a son of Southeast Asian refugees has reunited with family. Plus, a member of Huang's district in Taichung responds & kids' books on Native American heritage.
Dear all,
Hello! Michelle here. Yesterday a flying squirrel—think an orange, furry bat—flew into a pipe in our house, rattled around, and gnawed until it created a large hole. Albert tried to shoo it away; it escaped to a perch on the pipe and definitely glared at him. Then it outstretched its wings and flew away. I found this all very exciting.
In other news, I’m starting to feel a bit more settled in Taiwan. Our two-year-old started daycare, and she no longer wails when we drop her off. Albert has done an excellent job setting up her room (though he thinks that I don’t notice). I also started volunteering at a Vietnamese migrant workers’ shelter in Taoyuan, which is run by a Catholic diocese. (Thank you, Hong Tran, for telling me about it!)
We’re so glad to see many recent sign-ups; thank you for continuing to share this publication with Chinese- and English-language readers. Our piece on informers and regimes has been reprinted in the International News Lens; we’re grateful to Nick Haggerty for making this happen. Last week we published “We’ll Save it Ourselves,” on Taiwan’s pariah status and its dignity in the face of possible war. With the help of translator Lisung Hsu and editor Yahan Chang, this past Thursday we released the Chinese translation of Albert’s piece about his guilt in being a “leading” spouse (English version here).
If you’ve been receiving the Chinese version and don’t want to be, we apologize—we wish we could change it on our end, but Substack doesn’t have that function. For now you’ll have to go to your account settings and un-click the box for Chinese.
Michelle on Chan’s release from a California prison; he is free after serving 18 years.
Last summer a friend and I took on a case. Our client, Chan, was incarcerated in a California prison for taking another person’s life. He was eighteen at the time. In 2019, after eighteen more years in prison, the warden recommended that he be considered for release based on his extraordinary rehabilitation. A judge denied the warden’s request, and the initial public defender didn’t notify Chan of the denial.
By the time we got the case, it had been seven months since the denial. We worked on several fronts: we wrote two appeals briefs, prepared a clemency application to the governor, and helped prepare Chan for a parole hearing.
Three weeks ago, he was released. He’s home. His two sisters picked him up. As one of them told me, “The first thing he said was, ‘I’m free,’ and we all cried and hugged.” They kept it a secret from their parents because they wanted to surprise them. They surprised their mother first: a niece and nephew kept her distracted, telling her she had a phone call from him; as she was talking, he snuck up behind her. As the sister tells it, there were screams and tears of joy. Their dad was next: he was on a tractor, tilling the ground, and when he pulled up it took him a second to realize his son was standing in front of him. When he did, he cried out and hugged Chan.
In the fifteen months leading up to his release, I talked to Chan weekly. I learned so much about him and his life inside. At the prison he worked seven days a week training dogs, preparing them to be therapy dogs. He sometimes slept next to them, soothing them when they woke up in the middle of the night. He also worked as a staff barber, cutting the hair of hundreds of prison employees.
Chan was born and raised in California, but his parents are Iu Mien (a subset of the ethnic group that the Chinese refer to as Yao) refugees from Laos. His grandfather had fought for the U.S. and worked for the CIA. His dad was in his mid-teens when the family fled Laos and landed in a refugee camp in Thailand. That’s where he met Chan’s mother, who had also fled Laos; the two were eighteen when they got married in the camp. A year or two later, they immigrated to the states. Chan grew up in a refugee neighborhood, in an apartment complex filled with refugees from the Vietnam War.
I can’t talk much about the details of the case, as there’s still an oral argument to be heard in December about a separate legal issue (I plan to join virtually, though it’s at 5 a.m. Taiwan time). But I did want to let him share a few words here about what it’s like to come home.
For anybody on this list who is or wants to be a lawyer, this moment—he’s free!—is probably one of the purest joys you can experience. For anybody who’s had a family member incarcerated, what you do on the outside is tremendous—I’ve seen how hard it is to advocate, comfort, interpret, and serve as a go-between. (A shout-out here to Chan’s sister, who has been totally indefatigable.) For those here who have been incarcerated themselves, I know you have so much love to give. If you’d like to reach out to Chan, I can connect you.
Chan is warm and kind, and laughs easily. As I said, he loves dogs and animals more generally. He’s constantly trying to learn about other people and places. He always asks after my family. I’ve also been struck by his grief for the victim’s family; he recognizes the pain he caused them and carries that understanding with him. Making amends, he has told me, is the thing that makes his life meaningful.
Albert and I talked to him over Zoom earlier this week, and also got a glimpse of his mother and father. Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Michelle: How does it feel to come home?
Chan: It’s overwhelming, overwhelming. There is a sensory overload—a lot of different smells, sounds, tastes, or sights that I haven’t experienced in years. It’s like being a little kid learning how to ride a bike all over again. It comes back to you naturally but it takes time. I’ll catch myself thinking, Wow, I remember this smell, I remember this day and this place on the street. It’s amazing. It’s like being reborn again, in a way.
Albert: What’s the smell you’ve missed the most? For me, that’s the most important sense. Whenever I come back to Taiwan, that’s what triggers feelings first.
Chan: I’d say food and home cooking. Fresh garlic cooked in hot oil—that’s always a good smell.
AW: Do they not have garlic in prison? Sorry if that’s a stupid question.
Chan: They have powdered garlic. It’s not fresh and that’s not the same, you know? The other smell that’s a surprise is the gasoline at gas stations. And all the smog. [Laughter]
MK: I saw a few pictures you posted on social media of delicious-looking meals, including some dim sum! What’s the best home-cooked meal you’ve had so far?
Chan: Anything my mom prepares. Just cooking with her and spending time with her—that’s what I missed. Besides that, people want to see me and take me to eat. That’s the traditional thing people do here, they want to make you feel full.
AW: Are you back in the area where you grew up? Does it feel familiar in that way?
Chan: I’m in the countryside. My parents have a farm where they’ve raised ducks, chickens, pheasants, goats, and wild, wild pigs. I try to help them.
MK: What do you do?
Chan: I grind down the chicken feed using chicken scraps, as well as old food, pumpkins, things like that. I’ll chop it up and give it to the pigs to eat. Then I clean up and give them water, feed the chickens, and make sure they have brand new water in their bowls. Right before you called, my mother and I picked strawberries. It’s the end of season, so there’s not many. She’s going to take them to the market tomorrow.
AW: Has she said anything to you about your coming home?
Chan: She’s very happy that I can help, because my brother works a full-time job. He’s busy. My sister has family and work as well. Being here is a great help for her physically and emotionally. And we haven’t spent time together for a long time.
MK: How has your family responded to your coming home?
Chan: It was very emotional. As you know, my sister picked me up and we surprised my parents. They cried and hugged me. They’re so happy.
MK: I know you have a packed schedule of meetings. What does that look like?
Chan: I have a one-on-one with counselors every Tuesday about employment and staying sober. And then on Thursday and Friday I have a Zoom meeting for an hour and a half about transitioning back into society. I have a substance abuse meeting once every two weeks. I could go on and on, but pretty much it’s employment and things like that. And then every month I have meetings about jobs and assistance.
MK: Caring for dogs was a big part of your time in prison. Have you been able to have any relationships with dogs since you got out?
Chan: My mom and niece both have dogs. I like helping with them, but they’re way spoiled, so there’s not much I can help with. [Laughter.] They don’t eat regular food; they wait for barbecue every night. [More laughter.] But one family member has a golden doodle, who’s six months and has a lot of obedience issues. And so I’ve been helping with her dog and seeing some improvement. One of my niece’s friends has had a litter of huskies and we’re going to get one for my dad. So I’ll be working on that one too.
MK: Who’s going to take care of the dogs now that you’ve left prison?
Chan: Before I left I trained two guys and they were ready to go. When I left, they had a guy take my spot.
MK: Which dog are you missing the most?
Chan: I would say my golden retriever Jesse. She failed the program because she had a lot of anxiety but she still ultimately got placed with a family as a comfort dog.
MK: What were the final hours in prison like?
Chan: It was an emotional roller coaster. After I got past the en banc hearing, I thought that at any moment I could be going home. I was just waiting for notification from the [parole] board. Everybody before me had gone home, and I kept wondering why it was taking so long. I started asking about it, and I was told I still owed six months. So then I started to panic and reached out to everybody to figure out what was going on. I felt in my gut that something wasn’t right. I knew that if you get commuted you shouldn’t have a waiting period. And then suddenly I was told, “You’re gone tomorrow.” That was a pretty amazing moment for me.
MK: What did you do with your things?
Chan: I had a lot of personal belongings that I accumulated over the years. I always told myself I didn’t want to take this stuff home. So I gave away what I had to people who needed clothes. I gave away my TV and whatever else I could. I just gave it away. The only things I kept were pictures.
AW: Was it hard to say goodbye to friends inside?
Chan: Yes, there were those guys that I’ve been locked up with for a long time, in particular one Taiwanese guy, Mike.* I’ve been doing time with him for, say, over fifteen years. And it was real. It was hard watching him process me leaving. Because he knows that his chances of leaving aren’t too great.
AW: How did he respond? What were his emotions?
Chan: I think for him it was kind of bittersweet. Internally he’s okay. Seeing your friend go home is always great. But he has a lot of politics with his case, so he can't go home. He wants to feel good for me, but I know it’s hard. There’s plenty of guys in the same situation. I know good guys who have thirty-plus years in prison and can’t go anywhere.
MK: I’ve heard a lot of people who get out talk about survivor’s guilt.
Chan: Yes. I feel very blessed for this opportunity because a lot of guys are more suitable than I am and they aren’t able to go home because they have life without parole. I don’t think life without parole, in cases where nobody was killed, is a good thing.
MK: You heard the victim’s mother speak at the parole hearing. She said that you are a monster and that you haven’t changed. How did you feel?
Chan: That was very, very powerful. It was hard to hear. Knowing the outcome of my actions, knowing what I did to her and her family—I think a lot about what she goes through. I think about it every day. I hope it helped her to speak her heart and tell me all she wanted to say. She held those words for a long time, so I hope she got some closure from that. I know I can never take back what I did.
MK: Your background is pretty fascinating. Your parents were born in Laos but met in a refugee camp in Thailand?
Chan: When the war broke out, they were probably in their mid-teens, around thirteen or fourteen. They were in the refugee camp for about five years. Then they got married at eighteen and came here to the states.
MK: Your granddad was conscripted to fight for the CIA.
Chan: My grandfather and my great grandfather both fought for the CIA. My dad, being an only son, didn’t have to go. I just talked to my dad and asked him about the origins of our people. They were part of the ethnic group Iu Mien, part of what Chinese people call Yao, who were persecuted in China. That’s why they went to Laos.
He told me we don’t really have a written language. Everything we have is oral stories, songs and things like that. He does missions in China and goes to backwater villages or towns and tries to find his people.
MK: Your sister told me that your whole family wants to visit us in Taiwan and then go to your parents’ native home in Laos. I said, Please come!
Chan: I told my dad and he’s so excited. He’s started to plan all the goodies we need to bring. I was like, “Hold on there, we’ll go when it’s time.”
AW: Do you envision keeping in touch with people who are still in prison, or do you think you need to take that distance because it might retraumatize you to keep those connections?
Chan: No, no. Before I left, I had this number that I gave to plenty of guys. I told them, “My line is open. Call me whenever you want to talk; I’m here for you.” Because people would help me when I was in there, right? I know how it feels. Sometimes they just want to hear somebody out here instead of the people in there. So if I can do that for them, why not? Right?
MK: That’s good of you. I can imagine it's hard.
Chan: I’m also in talks with my parole officer and some people back inside the California facility. They want me to go back in and help out with the dog program and things like that. I can’t go right now, but in a year I would like to. I want them to see me and see that I’m out. Maybe it will give some guys some hope.
MK: You’ve talked before about affection. How is it being home? Do you feel like you can hug your family?
Chan: My family, like a lot of Asian families, tends not to hug. They don’t really say “I love you” or whatever. But me, I tell everybody I love them. I tell my mom, my brother, and my sister every time I get a chance. At first it’s maybe a little uncomfortable for them, but I’ve broken that barrier. And so communication with emotions is out there and open. And I think I helped them a lot because we talk more with each other, and they’re more vocal about how they feel about things. That’s something I brought home. I think that’s good forever.
* If there are any lawyers interested in Mike’s case, please let me know; he’s seeking one. It has to do with a DEA sting, and he was charged with aiding and abetting.
I also want to mention the many others who worked on this case, including my co-counsel Chris Lim; Milena Blake, Susan Champion, Michael Romano, and Andrea Deleon Cruz at the Stanford Three Strikes Project; Maya Emig, Alec Weiss, Avanindar (Avi) Singh, Bill Robinson, Ariana Arzani; and students at the American University of Paris—Eva Bonsignour, Chloe Fearey, Krystel Nozier, and Thorin Erb.
Response from Hsun-yu, a native of Taichung, who lives in Huang’s district.
We reached out to Hsun-Yu, asking him how voters are feeling about their representative being outed as a former informer to an authoritarian regime. He replied:
Thank you for the comprehensive coverage of Huang Kuo-Shu’s recent “scandal” (Chinese version here) and how to make sense of it. The piece is close to home for me because Huang comes from my electoral district (Taichung 6th district).
I always have a difficult time predicting whom my fellow constituents are going to elect. Over the years, we have sent controversial legislators to the Legislative Yuan. 黃義交, for example, was the spokesperson of the Taiwan Provincial Government under James Soong and headed to the Legislative Yuan after the revelation of his extramarital affairs with Clara Chou 周玉蔻. We also had some good ones recently, such as Lin Chia-lung. He later became the mayor of my city and is now Minister of Transportation and Communications.
I think Huang is one of the good ones, and that makes the whole thing even more complicated and delicate. I believe my neighbors feel the same; why else would they bother electing him three times? One of my friends, who is in his 30s, DPP-leaning, and voted for him 3 times in a row, was shocked when hearing the news. “Snitch” would be the last label for Huang. That said, my friend supports that this history should be brought to light and believes that restorative justice will help the public understand the reluctance and struggle among people in Huang’s circumstances. People were forced to be an accomplice under the authoritarian government, and that should be squarely disclosed and taught. Another KMT-leaning friend, also in his 30s but who has never voted for Huang, felt for him and understood that Huang might not have many choices. He also believed that the Transitional Justice Commission should disclose all materials they have seized instead of cherry picking.
Huang’s decision to not seek reelection confuses constituents: he’s been doing quite well and meeting our expectations. Another friend, who in his twenties and describes himself as a swing voter, shared his bewilderment: “People elected regional legislators (區域立委) to serve us, not to serve the party. What does being a snitch decades ago and ousted by New Tide now has anything to do with that commitment?”
Regardless, it is a loss for our district and the country. While I respect Huang’s decision, figuring out the means-end relationship is what he should do instead. Perhaps joining the restorative justice movement can be a good next step, I suppose?
A bit about Hsun-Yu, in his words: “A proud Taichung-er who lived in the states for 12 years and recently relocated to Taipei. Missing Taichung every single day.”
Native American heritage books for kids
It’s Native American heritage month! If you’re looking for children’s books honoring the heritage, here’s a delightful blog of Michelle’s childhood friend from Michigan, Susan O’Connor, who works as a librarian at the Kalamazoo Public Library. Our favorite on the list is Little You.
Book Club Updates: Girl, Woman, Other
It was a joy to talk to you in such intimate discussions about An Ideal Presence (Fern Books), written by Eduardo Berti & translated by Daniel Levin Becker. We shared stories of hospice and caretaking, asked why it is that mostly women provide relief from pain, and wondered why so many of the stories involved transgressing the “ideal distance” between patient and caregiver. We talked about what an “ideal presence” would look like, and this generated a lot of searching conversations.
Our next book is Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, and it is scheduled for Friday, November 19th, at 10 AM EST or 8 PM EST. You can join either or both! Please email us at ampleroad@substack.com (or reply to this email) for the zoom link.
Thanks for sharing the story of Chan. It's touching how he connects with his family and how he decides to stay in touch with friends inside.
It's nice to hear that you are more settled in Taiwan now!
I'd like to share some institutions working on migrant workers' issues that you may be interested :)
移人 Migrants’ Park (Internet independent media)
https://www.facebook.com/mparknews
燦爛時光：東南亞主題書店 Brilliant Time bookstore (bookstore that doesn't sell books but lends out books only.)
https://www.facebook.com/btbookstw/