Finding Independence in America

In 1970, Kwan Kew Lai arrived in the U.S. from Malaysia on an F-1 student visa, supported by a full college scholarship, to find a society in social upheaval following the Vietnam War. For a young woman raised in a politically restrictive, sheltered, and impoverished environment, her introduction to American life was marked by freedoms and complexities that were vastly different from the world she...