The SpinOff: Sunday Essay Illustration

I designed an illustration for The Spinoff’s Sunday Essay in response to the essay “Father’s mother tongue” by Jennifer Cheuk. The essay explores the emotional and linguistic distance between the author and her father as they navigate different languages, memories, and cultural contexts. It reflects on how growing up between English and Cantonese shapes identity, understanding and connection and how memories of place, language and family are traced through stories that sometimes go “nowhere” or exist only in shared understanding. 

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In my illustration, I drew from key moments in the essay, such as the author’s struggle to understand her father’s Cantonese, the sense of “rocking between two languages,” and the idea of shared meaning growing out of misunderstanding as a kind of unique language of connection. 

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By translating the essay’s reflections on language, family, and cultural inheritance into visual form, the illustration extends the text beyond words, offering a visual language that mirrors the emotional texture of the essay.