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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/59047/full/59047/jewish-mother-chinese-daughter-at-heart-of-mommy-doc/ <br /><br /> <b>Jewish mother, Chinese daughter at heart of ‘Mommy’ doc</b> <br /> Thursday, August 26, 2010 | by michael fox <br /><br /><p>No matter how entrenched, successful and assimilated American Jews have become in the last half-century, we rarely forget that we’re a minority.</p> <p>So it comes as a slight shock, late in the engrossing verité documentary “Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy,” when Donna and Jeff Sadowsky of Long Island must face the fact that their adopted Chinese daughter perceives them as white — that is, part of the majority.</p> <p>Most PBS viewers of Stephanie Wang-Breal’s gently probing and frequently touching adoption saga will focus on the language barrier, the difference between East and West (although nowhere near as great as it once was) and the culture shock of leaving a foster family in Guangzhou for a large suburban home with an enormous backyard.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 360px;"><img alt="Amommy" class="left" height="270" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/y_photos_2010/r08_27_10/Amommy.jpg" title="Donna Sadowsky greets her adoptive daughter Faith for the first time in “Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy.”" width="360" /> <div class="caption">Donna Sadowsky greets her adoptive daughter Faith for the first time in “Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy.”</div> </div> Jewish viewers will certainly be attuned to these factors, but they’ll be more sensitive to the irony and import of a family descended from immigrants reaching out to initiate a foreigner into the American way of life.</p> <p>As the film begins, the Sadowskys have two sons and an adopted 3-year-old Chinese daughter, Darah, who insists on remaining the baby of the family. So the newest member, whom Donna and her father fly to China to bring back, will be 8-year-old Fang Sui Yong.</p> <p>Before they depart, though, there’s a quick shot of the Sadowskys adding her new Chanukah stocking to those hanging on the mantle over the fireplace. Some viewers may interpret this bit of ethnic identification as shorthand for “Jewish family: Drama ahead.” A reasonable assumption in most cases, but not this one.</p> <p>Donna is a strong, loving and self-aware woman, and likable from the first. It does seem a bit aggressive, though, to tell her new daughter early in their first meeting that her name is now Faith Sui Yong Sadowsky.</p> <p>It may even strike you as a kind of tone-deaf, latter-day echo of the immigration officials at Ellis Island who Americanized the surnames of Eastern European émigrés a century ago. (Actually, that’s a myth that Jewish documentary maker Alan Berliner has debunked. U.S. officials took the names from the ships’ passenger lists, where they had been abbreviated and otherwise altered.)</p> <p>The opening chunk of “Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy,” spanning the 10 days or so of transition before Donna leaves China with Faith, is the most emotionally fraught and uncertain. Consequently, we’re quite invested in the girl’s first few months in her new home, where she alternates between excitement and homesickness.</p> <p>This is an interpersonal story rather than a political or social-issue film, in part because the Sadowskys don’t appear to be political people. Donna makes a point of saying that she didn’t adopt Faith (or Darah, for that matter) to save a life but to fill a void in her own life.</p> <p>A remarkable admission, but the filmmaker doesn’t pursue it. One senses that the Sadowskys set boundaries in order to retain their privacy, and anything that didn’t involve Faith was off limits. Heck, we don’t even learn what kind of work the father does to maintain their upper-middle-class lifestyle.</p> <p>The tension in the film, such as it is, derives from Faith’s initial reluctance to learn English. A bit spoiled (by her Chinese foster family) and given to crying and sulking, she eventually comes to realize that the hard work of learning a language is worth it. In fact, as the months go by and her English vocabulary increases, she begins to forget Chinese.</p> <p>By the film’s end, after Faith has been in the U.S. for a year and a half, she’s cheerfully embraced American mores and life. She is unwittingly following in the footsteps of numerous generations of immigrants, including the Jews she has just begun to learn about.</p> <p>This point is conveyed, subtly yet effectively, by Faith’s integration and participation at the bar mitzvah of the Sadowskys’ youngest son, Jared. An important symbol of both identity and assimilation, the reception also serves as a kind of landmark on Faith’s journey.</p> <p><br /><strong>“Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy”</strong> airs 10 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 31 on KQED Channel 9, and online at <a href="http://www.pbs.org/pov/woainimommy">http://www.pbs.org/pov/woainimommy</a> from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30.</p>

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