These are my mother's hands. This is where she grew up, without electiricity, without shoes until she was 12, living in a two bedroom hut with a thatched roof that never kept the rain out. It was fruit off the trees that kept her and her siblings from starving, as the crops their father planted almost always failed. She's lived a little over half her life in the States, and yet she still can't resist picking a ripe tamarind off a tree.

Josalee Thrift Photo