Living with her father and stepmother in Naples, Anna is very unhappy as her stepmother hinders her attempts to live her own life. While her parents are away, she goes out with Carlo, but finds herself locked out when she comes home. This angers Carlo and he asks Anna to go away with him to Rome, where he plans to liquidate his business assets in order to have money for marriage. He quarrels with his partner and is implicated when his partner is found murdered. Although innocent, he is convicted and given a long sentence. Anna has a child and, finding it impossible to support her child , returns to Naples. The stepmother's conditions are that before she will agree to house the child, Anna must commit herself to a reformatory for unmarried mothers.
In this powerful documentary, Mama Yang, an 84-year-old woman living in New York, finds herself in correspondence with 45 high security prison inmates she views as her own children. Most are Chinese American immigrants, and see in Mama Yang a mother figure they never knew before they stepped through prison walls.
For Mama Yang though, the story is about more than Christian charity. She had already lived a full life in Taiwan when her husband died at age sixty and her son lost their house in a financial blunder. She moved to the US to start anew and lives with a Taiwanese American granddaughter that remains distant. In a film marked by family separations, Mama Yang writes letters – whether to the incarcerated or to her own granddaughter – to heal lifetimes of wounds.