The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street: A Memoir

The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is an intimate geopolitical memoir about a family separated by distance and borders, split between Taiwan and Canada in the wake of shifting global powers.

In 1979, following the US–Taiwan break in diplomatic relations, a family emigrates from Taiwan to Canada—only to arrive in the midst of a deep recession. With few job prospects, the parents make a wrenching decision: to return to Taiwan for work, leaving their children behind in Vancouver. At just twelve years old, Wiley, the youngest child, suddenly finds herself unsupervised with only two rules to live by: study hard and stay out of trouble.

What begins as freedom soon gives way to homesickness, cultural dislocation and isolation. The siblings struggle in different ways, but once a month, during brief overseas phone calls, they gather to maintain the illusion of stability for their guilt-ridden parents. The separation grows from months to years. The family is never whole again.

The story of this fractured household parallels Taiwan’s own ongoing struggle for survival, identity and recognition—much like its children, scattered across the globe. The memoir draws a powerful connection between personal and political displacement, revealing a hidden history of resilience among transnational families.

While countless “astronaut children” and “parachute kids” have grown up in Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand, their stories remain largely absent from the literary landscape. The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street brings their experience into urgent and unforgettable focus.

“The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street chronicles the journeys taken by an immigrant child, not only the ocean-spanning treks, but the winding path to self-knowledge and forgiveness. Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho details the awkwardnesses of adolescence and the resentments of young adulthood with insight and self-deprecating humour. I was deeply moved by it, and you will be too.”

–Kevin Chong, Giller-shortlisted author of The Double Life of Benson Yu

“The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is brave, honest, and, most importantly, deeply affectionate. In this deliberately written memoir, Wiley Ho describes her life as the youngest of five children who were left behind in Vancouver while their parents worked in Taiwan, a separation that would ultimately reverberate throughout their lives. With equal parts generosity, anger, and love, Wiley writes about her family with a clear-eyed authenticity that is impossible to put down.”

–Jen Sookfong Lee, author of Superfan

“I remember growing up and attending high school with astronaut children in Coquitlam, and being simultaneously envious and awed by their unsupervised, grown-up-seeming lives. The astronaut teenagers that I knew drove the nicest cars and threw the best parties. In The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho illuminates the secret and rarely explored lives of astronaut children, as well as the numerous sacrifices that Taiwanese immigrant parents make for their children out of love and duty for the betterment of the family unit. The expansive memoir, spanning continents and oceans, offers a poignant and nuanced depiction of diasporic children parenting themselves. Deeply intimate, searing, and heartfelt, Ho draws up a compelling portrait of a transnational family with textured precision, chronicling a unique coming-of-age story and depicting the candid longings of youth. This is a beautifully written memoir containing complex multitudes of cultural resilience, self-resentment, and emotional displacement that will linger in your heart long after the very last page.”

–Lindsay Wong, author of Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies

“Poignant and beautiful—Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho delivers a gut-punch of a memoir. Hers is a deftly told tale layered with details of dislocation, loneliness, desire, and the kind of complicated love that exists only between parents and children. A triumphant story of reclamation. A startling first book.”

–Lisa Bird-Wilson, award-winning author of Probably Ruby

“In this vulnerable memoir, Wiley Ho pulls back the curtains on the many quiet houses I was so curious about growing up in Vancouver. Astronaut children are so much more than smart kids with expensive cars. Readers will discover they are also lonely, confused, abandoned and ‘caught between languages, cultures, homes, and identities—like fusion food, not fully one or the other.’ And that tension acts as a taut wire pulling readers through the fascinating narrative from Ho’s birth in Taiwan through her tumultuous coming of age in Vancouver and back again.”

–Tara McGuire, author of Holden After and Before – Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose

“The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is a poignant and eye-opening memoir that traces how a family’s impossible choices reverberate across continents and generations. Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho offers a thoughtful, intimate exploration of distance, dislocation, and the fragile bonds that hold families together, highlighting an experience too often missing from conversations about migration and the diaspora.”

–Rachel Phan, author of Restaurant Kid

“The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street truly elevates our understanding of the Asian-Canadian immigrant experience. Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho is a much-needed voice of Canada’s unaccompanied newcomer youth who quietly fend for themselves every day—often without educators, employers, or even their own kin knowing what may be happening behind closed doors. Through this memoir, Ho shows us a complex, complicated love—for her family, for Taiwan, and for herself.”

–Jennilee Austria-Bonifacio, author of Reuniting with Strangers

“The Astronaut Children of Dunbar Street is a triumphant debut, a quietly devastating novel about absence and endurance. Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho writes with precision and restraint, using accumulation, close observation, and tonal control to render the emotional cost of “astronaut families” without spectacle or sentimentality. The novel trusts silence, nuance, and withheld explanation to do its work, rewarding patient readers with depth, clarity, and an abiding sense of ache.”

–Wayne Ng, award-winning author of Johnny Delivers

“A riveting portrait of a family struggling to remain whole despite the ocean that keeps them apart. At once intimate and universal, Wiley Wei-Chiun Ho’s memoir evokes the longing and resentment that simmers within one family, ultimately showing how love can transcend the distance between people, generations, and cultures. I felt this story deeply, like an ache in my bones and a rush in my veins, unprepared for the emotional wallop that was building with every turn of a page.”

–Eddy Boudel Tan, Giller short-listed author of The Tiger and the Cosmonaut