Unaccompanied Minors

Two months before giving birth to her son, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho saw a therapist for the first time, hoping for reassurance that she’d make a good mother. “I’m here for you to tell me how normal I am,” she said, only half jokingly. However, by degrees, she admitted to an unusual childhood: her family came to Canada when she was nine, but three years later, her parents decided to move back to Taiwan, leaving Ho and her four older siblings to fend for themselves. “I believe that you are here because you have a need — conscious or otherwise — to untangle your childhood,” her therapist explained in the silence that followed. “To come to grips with why you were abandoned.” After crying uncontrollably, Ho fled the office and didn’t return for years.

This scene captures the emotional core of Ho’s moving and perceptive memoir: her deep-seated need to grapple with the anger, shame, and confusion of having been left behind. The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street begins...