“What can you do with the truth that everyone’s a little sad and a little alone.”
― The Hour of the Star
― The Hour of the Star
“And in the silence, I began to think: that's what frustrates me about a particular kind of migrant, the ones who drop their cultural baggage entirely in order to assimilate successfully into their new surroundings (as opposed to the other extreme, who cling desperately to memories of the homeland, and can't wait for the day they can retire and return to the place they have just left). For the problem with the Forgetters is that the need to wipe the slate clean in their adoptive country doesn't just begin and end with their arrival in their new land; it continues thereafter, repeating itself until it finds a convenient historical ground zero that is emotionally and intellectually untroubled, so that a new narrative about themselves is formed, a glowingly positive trajectory that strives for a clean story arc, complete with neatly packaged doses of pain - ultimately overcome, of course - that punctuate the rise to comfort and success and happiness.”
― Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family
― Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family
“I wonder how it would be if I let go and yielded myself to depravity.”
― The Setting Sun
― The Setting Sun
“In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.”
― Crying in H Mart
― Crying in H Mart
“For our family and others like us, separation is an expression of love. Not just in the physical sense, but in the way we think. We want our children to have an education and a job, to experience life in the way we never could, knowing that everything they gain will make them more distant from us. Loving someone means separating yourself from them. The future is lived vicariously through their achievements: their lives must follow an upward trajectory. They must not fail. That is what social mobility means in Asia today.”
― Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family
― Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family
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