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Pie has always played an integral role in America.
We say, as American as apple pie, for a reason.
I think this passage from the New York Times, published in 1902, still rings true today.
Pie is the secret of our strength as a nation and the foundation of our industrial supremacy.
Pie is the American synonym of prosperity.
Pie is the food of the heroic.
No pie -eating people can be permanently vanquished.
As someone who wants pie, not cake, on his birthday, I heartily agree.
For this week's reporter and Singaporean national Stacy Mae Yong Fong, pie isn't just a symbolic dish.
Pie is how she's figuring out her relationship to America.
In 2023, Stacy published a cookbook called 50 Pies, 50 States, where she baked a pie with ingredients that represented each state.
She then delivered those pies to recipients from those states as a way to get to know the country as she applied to gain permanent residency in America.
Now Stacy is at a new crossroads.
She's eligible to apply for U .S. citizenship.
So Stacey is revisiting her pies and the people she gave them to as she decides whether to make the United States her forever home.
And she wonders, does her adopted country really want her to stay?
Today on Proof from America's Test Kitchen, Stacey's journey to define home as America and the pies she bakes along the way.
I'm Jack Bishop. Stay tuned.
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Hi, welcome to Ikea.
This is my college campus.
Correct, but I see you're on Ikea .com ordering some college items. My daughter's room is pretty bare we need a lamp some comfy pillows her favorite stuffy dad with pickup options we've got what you need to conveniently order ikea literally anywhere sweet more time for gaming and studying wait where are you going now got to tell the ultimate frisbee team how easy it is to order from ikea get ikea whenever wherever however you want chews from thousands of pickup locations affordable delivery options and more writer stacy mae young fong brings us us today's story.
The idea of home has always been complicated for me.
I was born in Singapore, grew up in Indonesia and Hong Kong, and went to college in Savannah, Georgia.
I'm basically the definition of a third culture kid.
Where are you from feels like a loaded question, as I'm always trying to figure out who I am in between my different worlds.
Growing up, my dad worked in the hotel business, so my family moved constantly.
When I was two years old, we moved from Singapore to Indonesia.
We moved away from my grandparents, who I'd grown close to, which was sad.
I was five when we moved from Indonesia to Hong Kong and remained there till I left for college the day after my 18th birthday.
Hong Kong was the closest place that felt like home, though while in Hong Kong, we moved apartments constantly and would spend brief monthly stints overseas at whatever location my dad's work called him to.
This constant movement made me resilient and quick at adapting, but it also meant I spent a lot of my life bracing for the moment I'd have to put on a brave face and start over.
Whenever life became tumultuous, I went to the kitchen where things just made sense.
In Singapore, a way you greet a loved one is by asking, have you eaten yet?
No one in my family is a professional cook or baker, but we are all eaters.
And no matter where we were, family dinner was always at 6 p .m. Even if moving so much was tough at times, I appreciated the travel that my dad's job allowed us to do.
I got super excited every time we got on a long -haul flight to America, and I spent hours with my dad in the car listening to Simon and Garfunkel when my dad surprised us with a road trip to Disney World.
I loved visiting the winding rolling hills of San Francisco, where the dim sum was just as good as we had in Hong Kong.
I also loved listening to country music, especially Dolly Parton.
The lyrics in my Tennessee mountain home spoke to my longing for a steady place to call home as I gazed out of my bedroom window out onto the South China Sea.
So when it came time for college, I threw caution to the wind and uprooted my life again.
Inspired by my constant travel, I grew an appreciation for the arts, so I decided to move to study textiles and accessory design in America at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
I hoped this would lead to a job offer after college that would take me to New York.
What they don't tell you about the American dream is just how much paperwork is involved.
When I first moved to New York after graduating college in 2010, I was on what's called an OPT visa.
It's granted to graduates who have successfully completed their accredited college program and is valid for up to a year or three years if you studied in the STEM field.
I had a one -year OPT and I found my job as a handbag designer.
I'd finally made it to the country I'd pined for throughout my childhood.
hood. Over the course of six years, I held several hemp bag design jobs and got sponsored for an H1B visa at each one.
H1Bs are valid for up to three years and can be renewed for a maximum of six.
At the time of my last extension, I was working for JCPenney, designing hemp bags, small leather goods, and accessories for all their private label brands.
I was especially proud of a line of work totes that I designed to help the working woman travel with ease.
Things were great until until 2016.
I was 26. My roommate of seven years was moving out.
I'd just gotten my heart broken, and I was at the tail end of my H -1B and needed to figure out how I could continue to stay in this country.
On top of that, my paternal grandmother in Singapore had passed away.
I couldn't leave the U .S. and risk losing my visa.
I was trapped. I could either let my H -1B expire and return permanently to Hong Kong or Singapore, which I really didn't want to do, since i'd fought so hard to be able to live and work in america or i could apply for the next stage permanent residency otherwise known as a green card would allow me to live here for up to 10 years before renewing with permanent residency i could enter and exit the country with more ease i decided to take the leap and apply for a green card it's called that because the card you get is in fact green.
The idea of adopting a new country, even as a permanent resident, is emotionally fraught.
You earn the right to live in a country, but it comes with some conditions.
Even as a permanent resident in America, you pay taxes and Social Security, but you aren't given the right to vote.
Naturally, it's also a big move, bureaucratically speaking.
The worst part of the green card application most Americans might not know about is having to get your biometrics and vaccination records.
The government does this to make sure that you aren't a medical threat to the American people should they approve your application.
You have to get a full physical, your blood drawn, and a booster of any vaccination on the list that they tell you you need.
Getting your blood drawn and vaccinated after is a doozy.
I remember sleeping for what felt like three days after my exams. The 2016 election also loomed overhead.
Immigration was, of course, a big topic then, as it is now.
I remember thinking, will my application get approved?
Will all of the money and the work I'd put into it be in vain?
Getting my application ready was stressful, so to blow off steam, I decided to try my hand at pie baking.
My friend Patrick bought me the cookbook from my favorite pie bakery in Brooklyn, 4 and 20 Blackbirds.
To curb some of the application stress, I decided to bake my way through the pages.
I couldn't control the outcome of my green card application, but I could control how a pie came together.
When I baked, all I thought about was the action of baking and the music I was listening to.
As I sang to the tunes of Dolly Parton, it was the perfect relief to the stressful world around me.
It was around then that I decided to start a project that would run in conjunction with my visa application, something that would be a respite from the uncertainty of whether or not my application would be accepted.
accepted I called it 50 pies 50 states which started as a small personal project that ended up as a published book and so much more I baked a pie for every state in America based on its state foods fruits or some sort of regional cuisine then I gave the pie to someone I knew from each state I hope to learn and know more about myself and what home and America can truly mean to someone one.
It was my way to process the feelings I've always had about belonging nowhere and to no one, pining for that sense of home.
On June 13, 2023, the book was released to the world.
What has been so beautiful about this Pi journey is that I forged this trip on my own and picked up so many companions.
This year, the book celebrated its second birthday, and I once again find myself at a crossroads.
My permanent residency is due to expire in 2027, and I'm now eligible to apply for U .S. citizenship.
What's different this time is that, if I naturalize, I'll need to surrender my Singaporean passport.
Singapore doesn't recognize dual citizenship.
So if I naturalize, it means I need to choose a side.
I decided to revisit the pies of my past and the people who got to eat them, hoping this would give me clarity on which side to take.
I want to stay in America, but does America want me here, especially now?
The first pie I made for the 50 Pies Project was in honor of Alabama.
This was the first pie in the series, so I kind of let it build itself.
I based the pie on its state fruit.
It was a blackberry peach pie with a pecan crumble.
Its recipient, Adam Zachary Porter.
Adam Porter was my first friend at the Savannah College of Art and Design.
We met because of a mutual love of the band, The Format, and have been friends ever since.
Adam is from Huntsville, Alabama, which he describes this way.
Some of Alabama is what you think Alabama is.
Alabama can be very redneck and very poor, but there's some little spots that aren't.
Alabama is known for some of the strictest anti -abortion laws in the nation, with abortion being illegal at all stages.
And most recently, ICE raids have swept the state, leading to almost 500 arrests and counting.
But what I discovered about Alabama when I was researching my cookbook is that its state fruits are used in schools to teach students about how a bill turns into law.
I learned that Alabama designated the blackberry as its official state fruit in 2004 after a campaign led by third graders at Fairhope Elementary School.
When I delivered the pie to Adam, I remembered it being a quick handoff while he took a break from work.
We talked about how wonderful it was for him to be the first pie recipient and how it was the start of a really sweet journey I was about to embark on.
Adam isn't much of a talker.
He usually speaks with single word responses when you ask him questions.
But when I told him recently, about my situation, that I'm contemplating whether or not to apply for American citizenship, he was effusive in his own way.
What would it mean to you if I applied for citizenship?
One, I would love it because I love you.
I want to see you more often.
And I think you can do another book.
When I really dug into why this was such a difficult decision for me, though, the current state of the country and how it makes me a bit nervous, Adam responded in the way many people who haven't touched the immigration system might have. So I'm not a political guy, but back and forth between the two, I would want you to stay here.
I don't know how that works going back and I don't know how it works staying.
The way it works is for someone like me, who's had their green card for five years or more, we become eligible for naturalization.
For anyone who considers, this is a big deal.
You're agreeing to become an American citizen and pay American taxes for the rest of your life.
It's an even bigger deal for me because I need to say goodbye to the most powerful passport in the world and say hello to a country that in recent years feels like it doesn't even want me to stay.
As I discussed all of this with Adam, he responded, I don't like politics.
Well, you also have the luxury of not really needing to pay attention to politics because you are a white man?
Adam didn't know how to react to that.
Oftentimes, it's easy for people to avert their eyes and say things like, I don't like politics.
For immigrants like me, not paying attention to politics is a luxury I can't afford, because politics touches our lives in ways that make it inevitable for us to have to look at it square in the face.
Despite all that, I appreciated Adam's sentiment, that he He wanted me here, but that he understood that it was a complicated decision for me.
That Alabama pie was the first of the 50, and I remember feeling so excited after I finished it.
I was then ready to dig into the rest of the 49 states.
Connecticut was the seventh pie I made for my project, and one that I was very excited to bake.
In high school, I spent my summers at a camp called Explo at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut.
I hung out on the quad, ate my first American Chinese food, and learned about Dave Matthews' band.
It was then that I fully made the decision I wanted to end up in the States for college.
My ties to Connecticut would only be strengthened when I met my best friend Lauren in college in Savannah.
Hi, I'm Lauren Rinaldi, and I have known Stacey since 2006.
We met freshman year of college, and I am the recipient of the Connecticut Pie.
But I couldn't fly back to Hong Kong or Singapore for the holidays.
I would spend them with her family in Fairfield.
I'm going on almost a full decade of Thanksgivings and Christmases at the Rinaldi household.
It is so wonderful to have built a sense of family and stability that I hadn't felt in my life before I met Lauren.
Do you remember the first time I got invited to Christmas?
Why you invited me over for a holiday?
day honestly it just felt like it was so natural you coming over for holidays i was like oh we're like what are your holiday plans you're like oh i'll probably just stay here and i was like but why and you're like because that's it's like too hard to go home to hong kong and i was like but i live in connecticut that's so close to here and yeah and then also just the fish alone of Seven Fishes is like, like, I would twist anyone's arm to come.
Prior to meeting Lauren, I had never heard about Seven Fishes.
It's the Italian -American celebration that happens on Christmas Eve, where you abstain from meat and feast on seven or more types of seafood.
It's now a tradition I look forward to every year.
Growing up in Hong Kong and as a Chinese person, the closest parallel I could think of was the meal we would have at Chinese New Year.
Each dish symbolized something and served a purpose, which was bigger than it just being so delicious.
When I delivered the Connecticut pie to Lauren in August of 2016, it was an absolute adventure and a day.
I made a snickerdoodle souffle pie because snickerdoodles happened to be Connecticut's state cookie.
It had a fluffy filling soaked in a cinnamon sugar syrup that we ate after a New England clam bake her mom made for us at their house.
Afterwards, I got to show Lauren the Connecticut I know and she got to show me the Connecticut she knows.
It started with a road trip in a fancy car across state lines.
We jumped in Brian, that's my husband's dad's Jaguar.
We drove along the coast and we went all the way up to Yale so we could see where you went to summer camp.
And you showed me the room where you had like, you would wait up at night and talk to the boys.
And we're like, wow, that's beautiful.
This is great. and then we went to mom and dad's house and mom had made a New England clam bake.
My main motivator to stay in America were days just like this.
Making memories no matter how big or small cemented why this place was and is my home.
I've integrated myself into my friends' lives as much as they have in mine.
When I asked Lauren how she would feel if I applied for citizenship, she said, The only thing that would make me sad is that you would have to give up your adorable, beautiful, red Singapore passport.
But if it means risking you not being here, then absolutely, I would want you to go for it.
It's just a scary time frame right now.
She's referring to the news surrounding green card holders getting deported in recent months.
You're still from Singapore, and you can be from here too, and that doesn't matter.
You're between a rock and a hard place of figuring out what you need to do so that you can continue your life.
And your life's great and beautiful here.
Like, we love you here.
Lauren was right. You can be from two places.
It might not be so on paper, but in your heart, you know where you were born and you know where you belong.
After I checked Connecticut off my list, I baked a peach custard pie for the first state to become a state, Delaware.
Then it was time to bake a pie that painted a more complicated picture of America.
That's when things got a little more swampy.
November 2016 was a stressful time for everyone in America.
It had been six months since I'd submitted my green card application, and I was waiting patiently, and I was worried.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I was supposed to deliver a pie in honor of Florida the day after the election.
I baked a key lime pie, I made my own graham crackers, freshly squeezed a pound of key limes, no easy task, and baked as much love into the pie as possible.
On election night, I remember watching the results closely.
It is now 11 .30 in the East. You hear that chime?
We have a projection.
It is a big one. It is the state of Florida.
29 electoral votes.
They go to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump has won the state of Florida.
Once the results for Florida rolled in, that was that.
I knew there was no turning it around.
It felt like all hope was lost. I decided to turn off the TV and go to bed.
I cried myself to sleep that night with a deep fear that my petition for permanent residency might be denied.
Possible deportation also crossed my mind.
When I went to work the next day, the air in the city was thick with emotions.
I walked right by the Javits Center, and they were throwing out all the confetti that was supposed to look like a shattered glass ceiling.
It was heartbreaking to watch as bits and pieces billowed in the wind.
I didn't think any pie could save or help me understand the uncertainty or the depth of sadness.
But I delivered the pie anyway to my Florida friends at their workplace.
My name is Jamie Barker.
My name is Megan Balch. My name is Danielle Lamott.
When I caught up with them recently, I reminisced about the pie delivery day in 2016.
They remember the day being a somber, overcast, gray day.
I remember just truly being like, I can't believe we're leaving the house right now.
I remember taking the train to work and crying and seeing everyone else on the train cry as well.
We all went to the office and mostly cried.
And then tried to look happy when you brought us a pie.
The election felt like a referendum on a set of immigration policies that had historically welcomed people like me in this country.
It was devastating to feel like I'd been in a protective bubble this whole time, and that the reality was majority of people in Florida and so many people in this country didn't want immigrants here.
here. Yet, here I was, the day after, an immigrant, walking into an office of three people that I loved, with a pie that symbolized a different version of Florida.
Florida is the only state with a national park that's a barrier reef.
The Florida Keys have the bluest waters and couldn't be more different than the mountains of Colorado or the bustling streets of New York City.
Plus, the state is home to the most magical place on Earth, Disney World.
When I delivered the pie, this is what we focused on.
We talked about their childhoods, going to the beach, basking in the sun, and the public sandwiches.
We ate pie, laughed, and broke the tense and fearful feeling that was hanging over our heads.
Even just for the moment, we knew that in our America, we had each other.
something that came up a lot during the conversation that day was the ability to vote as a permanent resident you do not have the right to vote during elections whether local or presidential you're at the mercy of the american people it isn't until you are a nationalized citizen that you are granted the power and the right though one vote might not mean a lot the the ability to do so holds a lot of weight.
The weight that maybe you could play a part in your future and not leave it up to chance.
Megan agreed. One of the few things that makes me feel like I have any amount of control is my ability to vote.
And that alone would encourage me to want to get citizenship.
To gain back a little bit of control that I'd given up for the last almost 20 years living on visas was a big motivator for me.
The only thing that's really holding me back, of course, is the idea of giving up my Singaporean citizenship.
When you talked about exchanging your driver's license from Florida to New York, one, like that was a very difficult decision for you to make.
That's kind of the decision that I'm at right now with my citizenship.
You know, my first thought is like, well, duh, like you're staying and you're applying for citizenship and you're going to be here and be with us and be with it like you're you've always been here stay but the fact that that comes with such a huge loss i genuinely don't know what that feels like i can't imagine losing a place i used to that you grew up at i would have to say that i think this would be a crazy time for you to consider that being a minority woman this is not not the time that I would be looking to pledge my allegiance to the United States of America.
I think America would be better for having somebody like you pledge their allegiance.
I think, to me, if you applied for citizenship, it would be a very hopeful, optimistic, lovely thing in the sense of you're choosing this place that I feel like right now so much of us are for having such a hard time with living and seeing the good part of.
And so for you to choose that would definitely be being like, Okay, here's this person I love and I trust and who makes my life better is choosing to stay.
After the break, Stacey recalls an important email that would change her life.
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And now, back to our story.
My green card was approved on August 17, 2017.
I was at work at JCPenney about to go into an all -hands meeting.
Right before I got up from my desk, I decided to refresh my inbox one last time.
I saw an email from the company's lawyer, so I opened it and immediately saw, highlighted in yellow, your petition for permanent residency has been approved.
My design director, Rebecca, was the first person to find out about the approval.
You sat on the other side of our very short partition.
You could actually see everybody's head.
And I remember you popping up very quickly with your eyes extremely wide open.
And you looked at me and you said something like, I got it.
And immediately just tears came to my eyes and I knew it was this moment that I, and I think you and I stared at each other for about five seconds without saying anything.
just basking in the awe of it finally here and finally happening.
My Green Card approval felt very personal to Rebecca.
Not only did she help petition for the company to get my application, her husband, who is Irish, had gone through the exact same process.
So she knew exactly what I was going through.
I think what we all have to remember is the reason for the majority of the people that come here is to better their lives, whatever the country is from, and to create this new life for themselves.
And as time goes on and you become more settled or you get married or you have children or you have careers and friendships, it becomes more and more home.
When I told Rebecca that I'm at a similar crossroads now, But that choosing naturalization meant I, as a Singaporean passport holder, needed to surrender that in order to become an American.
It challenged her understanding of how I would navigate the concept of home.
I think I'm really surprised and did not realize that if you were to become a naturalized citizen that you would have to give up.
up. That's giving me so much pause.
And as I'm listening to you talking about getting this green card and having that experience that I never realized in the back of your mind that that was something that you had to take into consideration, knowing it wasn't happening at that moment, but that's something that you always will ultimately have to make that decision on.
Where we see the country going is such an it's a big question mark.
But having you be a part of it, whether it's as a green card holder or as a citizen, doesn't matter to me.
You need to be a part of it.
And that's, I think, the most important thing.
At the tail end of 2019, I completed 44 pies out of the 50 for my book.
Pie number 45 was South Dakota.
I had no idea where to start.
The state foods or regional dishes that I researched just didn't feel right.
and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.
My buddy Matt had recently done a graphic design project for a group of historians in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
So he recommended I reach out to a man named Eric Zimmer.
I cold emailed Eric and boy, did he turn out to be a wealth of knowledge.
He introduced me to the work of Sean Sherman, better known as the sous chef.
I bought Sean's cookbook and tore through it.
I decided I would make a pie inspired by Native American cuisine.
The research for this pie opened my eyes to so many things.
The food of the tribes that existed here before colonization.
What truly, without a doubt, is the most American food.
More American than pie itself.
After a few emails back and forth, Eric invited me out to South Dakota in January of 2020.
I thought, why not fly to a place that I've never been to to share a pie?
I asked my best friend Lauren, the Connecticut pie recipient, to go with me.
And we got on the cheapest flight we could find to Rapid City, South Dakota.
My name's Eric Zimmer.
I'm a historian from the Black Hills of Western South Dakota, currently work at the Black Hills Area Community Foundation.
And my family and friends and I were honored and delighted to be the recipient of Stacy's South Dakota Pie.
Eric is not an indigenous person, but was born and raised in the Black Hills.
In his 20s, he realized how the intensity of history and the tension between Native and non -Native people shaped the fabric of the place he calls home.
With this realization, he committed his life to understanding these dynamics by becoming a historian.
I think that there's a couple of really kind of driving questions that make my community in the Black Hills tick.
You know, one is around land issues.
One is around points of conflict and tension between Native and non -Native people.
and the other is just around community, right?
And what is this community?
What's the makeup of this community?
What makes it tick?
Eric's innate curiosity made him the perfect person to dedicate this pie to.
And his kindness also made me feel very comfortable traveling halfway across the country to meet a complete stranger.
If a person was going to do that first blush South Dakota pie, you might do something with bison meat in it, right?
There's ways to think about the things things that people where I grew up would eat.
What Stacey did was sort of ask about the place, ask about what was interesting and we were excited about.
By tearing through Sean Sherman's book, I learned that white flour didn't exist before reservations and they didn't have access to refined sugar.
Things were sweetened with berries and sap.
Things that are widely known as Native American cuisine, like fry bread, were actually the product of colonization and the establishment of reservations.
observations. By taking the chance and digging deeper, I got to grasp a small understanding of the food that the indigenous people in America were eating.
What I ended up making was a wild rice pudding pie made with sunflower milk, a blue corn crust topped with a berry bergamot tooth sweet with a maple pepita crunch. Rather than picking something that was kind of reflective of this place in the sense that it spoke to kind of the obvious icons or stereotypes of the place.
You built this pie that's kind of like a cultural as well as physical geography of the state.
The sauce that was on it was not particularly, but spoke to wojapi, which is a Lakota sauce that people have with fry bread and different things.
The sunflowers kind of speak to me to the agricultural tradition of the eastern side of the state where sunflowers and other crops are developed, right?
The kind of earthiness and the overall kind of essence of the pie felt very kind of like West River forests and mountains to me.
The incredible amount of like forethought and work that you had to do to do that and then bring it and then make it and then the thing that you made reminded me of so many parts of of this place that I thought that I knew well, while also kind of speaking high level to the deep indigenous traditions of this place.
It was just remarkable.
What touched me the most with my newfound friendship in Eric was his openness to talk to a complete stranger with a hair -brained pie project.
It only really dawned on me when Eric and I chatted recently.
You were just ready to like open your home to me.
And I think that's something that's gotten kind of lost in the last few years in America.
It's this, like, feeling that it's like, no one wants to have these, like, nice conversations anymore with anybody that's, like, a little bit different than them.
Me and you couldn't have grown up more differently on, like, opposite sides of the world.
But you were ready to just be like, sure, I'd like this girl that's going to make this pie come into my home, and I'm going to show her around and make this thing that was a very special project to me even more special and add so many more layers to it.
I think it's this sort of emotion and frustration that comes with this awareness that in the moment that we're in, it feels like sometimes we're losing sight of the thing that we say we are.
Why would I not welcome someone who I had never met to my area in my home, someone who had this passion and this creativity about place and about food and its power to bring people together?
It didn't seem at all weird or out of step for me, based on the place I was raised and the culture of this place and the people who I've spent my life with, that you would extend a hand of welcome and of gratitude that somebody wanted to come out here.
What I've gained the most from my 50 Pies project is the connections with people.
It always starts with pie, but it never ends with just pie.
At the end of each state, I gained a new friend and cemented relationships with people I just met.
They leave such a long -lasting impression on me as I hope I do with them.
When I spoke to Eric about whether or not I should nationalize, he said, Whichever country ends up with your full citizenship, whether it's Singapore or Canada or whatever, they will be better off for having it, not worse off because you grew up in a different place, right?
We are living in this moment where we're all being told to put people in boxes, right?
So if you live where I live, you're supposed to think certain things about people who live on the coast. And if you live on the coast, you're supposed to think certain things about people in what the world calls flyover country, right?
Right. There's a texture and dimension around who we are as people and what unites us that's getting flattened out right now.
And anything that helps people be reminded that most people are just living their lives and trying to be courteous and compassionate to other people and that there is kind of optimism in that is worth doing.
it. After chatting with my friends and pie recipients, I had an inkling of what my final decision about making America my forever home would be.
But first, I wanted to consult my family.
Hi, I'm Stephen Fong, the proud father of Stacey Fong -May Yen, my eldest daughter.
Hi, I'm Stacia May Yen Fong.
I'm Stacey's sister, and I've had some of her hand pies before, And they were very delicious.
My name is Serafina.
I am Stacy's youngest sister.
My family has all spent time in America, whether for college, vacations, or work.
Though some of those memories and times are shared, all of us have a very individual view of what this country means to us and what it means as a whole.
My sister Serafina, who currently lives in Italy, had this to say.
I did my bachelor's degree in the U .S. So I lived in Boston and I really enjoyed my time there.
But I'm not sure why, but a part of me does not want to go back to the U .S. I don't know if it's just the lifestyle here.
That made sense to me.
Serafina has been able to travel with ease internationally, even on her visa while living in Europe.
My sister Stacia, who also lives in the United States, harbors a little bit of doubt about living in America.
Part of me has had thoughts as of late where I was like, wait, why did I want to move here so badly?
Like, they don't even want us here.
My dad, on the other hand, has a more even -keeled opinion about America.
He spent some of his college years here, traveled here for work, and speaks of his time in the States fondly.
I've always had a lot of admiration for America, having studied there, worked there.
And we have very fond memories as a family of America, especially Hawaii.
Hawaii, which deters you grew up pretty much for two years of your life.
I obviously grew up with a very idealistic view of America.
Having lived here for so long, I'm not jaded about the injustices and all the terrible things that are happening.
But also, I think it's my friends in my community that have created this positive outlook on this country.
That's why I keep holding on and fight to stay here longer.
What I really wanted to know, though, was if I went for full -blown citizenship, how would it make them feel?
Serafina says, I don't know if your life would be much different, right, if you do apply for citizenship, because, like on paper, it will just be that you're a U .S. citizen as opposed to a Singaporean one, right?
I would hope that you'd be able to leave the country a bit more often to visit me in Italy or visit dad in Singapore.
Would Stacia, my sister who also lives in the U .S., feel the same way?
I want you to be able to pursue your lifelong dreams and to be happy in your lives.
So no matter what you choose, I'm going to support you.
Selfishly, I hope that you stay in the States because I think that that's probably what I'm going to do as well.
And what about Dad?
Dad. Having a Singaporean citizenship is insurance.
Being a full -blown global citizen, where you live, the citizenship you have becomes pretty much irrelevant.
I've been blessed with a very non -traditional Chinese father who is very open -minded and allowed us to make our own decisions.
And with citizenship, I can enter and exit America much easier and safer.
My dad also has hope that America will change, and the status quo today won't necessarily prevail.
The majority of Americans will apply more common sense and rally together to try and restore, maybe not replicate the America that both of us grew up in, but certainly to correct some of the wrongs.
Our goals are in terms of helping humanity and our neighbors, family, of course, is included in that.
But having that grounding is important, and where you're located becomes secondary.
What gives you the motivation in life?
What gives you that motivation in your community?
If you can't find your passion, then you get frustrated, you're not yourself.
yourself if you can find a situation in a country or city where you can achieve that goal with it.
There's a quote from the first season of Pushing Daisies I thought about often as I was working on my 50 Pies project.
Lee Pace's character Ned the pie baker says, candy might be sweet but it's a a traveling carnival blowing through town.
Pie is home. People always come home.
When I wondered what pie could make to help me grapple with this citizenship crossroads, the only pie I could think of was a good old Norman Rockwell -esque apple pie.
With the apples piled high to the sky, I would sit down and eat it a la mode and ponder what the future might hold.
I asked my pie recipients and my family what they thought I should bake.
Like, I feel like it has to be a split pie, a half and half pie.
And there has to be like half has to represent Singapore and half has to represent the U .S. and kind of saying goodbye in a sense to one part and hello to the next part.
I also kind of see you doing an apple pie that feels very traditional and American, American but adding just like a classic something like Stacey Flair to it I would hope that it was a sweet pie because I think that going through what you're going through and the tension you feel around the question you have to ask yourself and the answer that you come to and the conditions under which you're making that decision I hope that something sweet would bring a little salvation and joy to your day I'm looking at my decision should I choose to naturalize as not something to lose but something to gain I
moved around a lot as a child and that makes you feel a little bit lost but I feel like since moving to America I've really felt a sense of home that I've never felt anywhere else what I've gathered from revisiting the Pies and the people who receive them is that the America I know and the America I've created wants me to stay.
The reward of having these people in my life is worth the risk.
That is the America I have chosen to call home.
I'm going to keep baking pies.
I'm going to keep listening to people's stories.
I'm going to sit here and ponder a little longer.
I'll see you at home.
Thanks to Stacey Mae Yong -Fong for bringing us today's story.
You can find her cookbook, 50 Pies, 50 States, wherever books are sold.
Listeners, we're going on another quick break as we produce some new stories for you.
But keep tuning into the feed so you won't miss out on new episodes of Proof.
An Airwave Media Podcast.
