Immigrant parents dream that their children will find a place in

The words of Gene Luen Yang — “Immigrant parents dream that their children will find a place in their new home, and they willingly suffer hardships in service to that dream. That was certainly true of my parents.” — carry the weight of generations, the echo of footsteps across oceans, and the quiet heroism of those who build futures in lands not their own. In these few lines lies a truth as old as humanity itself: the sacrifice of the parent, the journey of the exile, and the promise of the child. His words do not speak of grandeur or conquest, but of devotion — the kind that endures hunger, loneliness, and fear so that love may take root in unfamiliar soil.

At the heart of this quote is the timeless story of immigration, the eternal pilgrimage toward hope. Throughout history, men and women have left their homes — not because they wished to, but because they must. They crossed seas, deserts, and borders, carrying little more than dreams in their hands. Their greatest wealth was the belief that their children would have what they could not — belonging, safety, and the dignity of opportunity. Gene Luen Yang, through his own family’s story, gives voice to millions who share this quiet truth: that the immigrant’s journey is an act of faith, a covenant written not in words, but in toil and tears.

In the ancient world, this pattern was already known. When Aeneas fled the burning city of Troy, he carried upon his shoulders his aged father and in his arms the household gods — symbols of the past and of faith. He did not seek glory, but a new home where his descendants could flourish. Rome itself, the empire that would shape history, was born from such exile. The story of Aeneas mirrors the journey of every immigrant parent: to endure hardship not for themselves, but for those who will come after. So too did Yang’s parents, and countless others like them, bear the burden of dislocation so their children could walk freely in lands that once felt foreign.

To be an immigrant parent is to live between two worlds — the memory of what was and the hope of what might be. It is to work silently while others sleep, to struggle in obscurity while the child thrives in light. The fields they till are not of soil, but of possibility. They labor in anonymity, yet every effort becomes a seed planted in their children’s future. What they lose in comfort, they gain in purpose. Their sacrifice is not measured in money or status, but in the success of their children — in the moment when the next generation stands tall, fluent in the language of their new world, bearing both the old culture and the new with grace.

But Yang’s words also carry sorrow — for the hardships of immigration are not only material, but spiritual. To leave one’s homeland is to carry a wound that never fully heals. The immigrant learns to smile through distance, to celebrate while missing the familiar faces of home. And yet, as the ancients taught, suffering is the forge of virtue. Through struggle, resilience is born; through displacement, empathy grows. The children of immigrants, raised between worlds, become bridges — bearers of understanding between cultures, storytellers of both past and present. Yang himself, as an artist and writer, transforms his family’s sacrifice into art, giving meaning to pain and continuity to memory.

Consider the story of Andrew Carnegie, who arrived in America as a poor Scottish boy and rose to become one of the most influential industrialists in history. His parents had endured poverty and hardship so their son might live without fear of hunger. When Carnegie achieved success, he did not forget the lesson of their sacrifice — he devoted his later years to philanthropy, building libraries, universities, and institutions to give others the opportunities his parents once sought for him. His story, like Yang’s, is the embodiment of the immigrant’s dream fulfilled: that the suffering of one generation might become the foundation of another’s triumph.

The lesson in Gene Luen Yang’s words is one of gratitude and remembrance. We are all, in some way, the heirs of sacrifice — whether our ancestors crossed seas or endured hardships of a different kind. To honor them is not merely to remember their struggle, but to live well because of it: to be kind, to build, to create, to carry their hope forward. The child of immigrants has a sacred duty — to find their place not only for themselves, but for those who came before. For every dream realized is a prayer answered, and every success achieved is a torch passed down from hands calloused by labor and love.

So let these words be both a tribute and a command: do not forget the price that was paid for your freedom to dream. Walk with humility, for your steps rest upon the sacrifices of others. Whether your roots stretch across continents or only across generations, remember always that someone suffered so that you could stand where you are. Like Gene Luen Yang’s parents, they endured not for glory, but for love — a love vast enough to cross borders and patient enough to wait for the dawn in a strange land. Such love, once given, becomes eternal — the quiet, unbreakable foundation upon which all new worlds are built.