New York: Stories of Struggle
By Herb Tam
My wife, Lu Zhang, and I were at the Milan airport on February 23, the day Italian newspapers screamed in boldfaced headlines about the coronavirus outbreak in the country’s northern regions. Suddenly, being Chinese in a European airport felt profoundly unsafe. I sensed suspicious eyes diverting their glares away from us at the security line and worried about not being able to get back home to New York.