“Dear Baba,” a piece by Zifeng Liang, is a powerful piece on the intricacies of family life when it’s like there’s someone missing from yours. The writer is talking about her successful father, someone who had to always be absent from important events in her life in the name of having a job. One day, her father seems distraught after a family reunion, and tells her that he’s sorry, seemingly crying for the first time that she’s seen. They both hug, leaving her to say that she’s sorry too after realizing that she was partially to blame as well.
     I think that the most powerful part of the piece is how it illustrates that the root cause of all this heartbreak was just a failure to communicate. Zifeng shows that she never thought about his perspective, and how it felt to be in his situation whenever he couldn’t see his daughter. She writes, “During those countless nights in empty hotel rooms, did he ever felt left behind by his family like I did? I was not there for him, either, so who was I to place blame?” Although I was lucky enough to have a flexible family that can be there if I need them to be, it nonetheless shows me, and anyone else, how important it is to talk to your family about how certain actions can make you feel, while also considering both sides.