“You do this with every guy you meet. You give them what they don’t deserve, and that’s why they hurt you.” (272)
today’s count: 48 checked out 1 available for pickup 9 outstanding holds
40 renewed, and i’m pretty sure i can put a hurtin’ on this remainder by feb 17th, which is my next big due date. this one was tricky-i thought it was a young adult novel, but now that i’ve read it, i’m not so sure.
“What Mrs. Kim didn’t realize yet was how little she actually needed to know to survive in this country. Jhee remembered when she first arrived, the fear and hopelessness that tugged her at every sign she couldn’t read, every conversation she failed to understand. But then it turned out that words on signs were often accompanied by descriptive pictures (an x through a lit cigarette) or revealing colors (green for yes, red for no), and there weren’t many phrases you needed to know to sell handbags to customers.” (123)
that was for a particular child that i’ve struggled with for the past couple of weeks, the one that keeps developing mysterious illnesses that arise when she has to read-headache, seasickness (!), and a sore throat respectively. this morning it dawned on me that she frustrates me so because she reminds me of having to be around my father-go figure.
unspoken heard:
“He knew I liked hearing these words from him, but he was using them too frequently. Six weeks ago, Father had been nothing more than a picture in Mother’s album of black-and-white photographs, a man who stood beside her in various poses behind various backgrounds. He’d left five years ago to make us a new, better life in America, and now here he was, in the flesh. In the pictures, he looked taller than he actually was, maybe because Mother was sitting down while he hovered over her, but everything else was exactly the same: his hair still short and parted to one side, his dark-framed eyeglasses too big for his face. He seemed harmless enough, but then I’d catch him on the phone talking to his wholesalers, looking sideways at me as he spoke, giving me a wink-and suddenly he looked like a different person, a fake.” (11)
“It was odd how relationships changed when you moved away, how when you started writing letters, you were actually creating a wholly different bond. You almost became a different person.” (24)
“This was the magic of children, wasn’t it? To see the simple in the complicated. Maybe instead of getting worked up, all Hong had to do was just tell Kim that he wanted to go with them on their next fishing trip. Was that so hard?” (68)
“All of my little fibs held one another’s hands, quickly forming a chain of dependencies.” (79)
“Her husband said they couldn’t eat /kimchi/ at the store because it stunk. Americans found the smell unappetizing, though nothing disgusted In Young more than to walk by the cheese aisle in the supermarket. How anyone ate something so rank and continued to live was anybody’s guess.” (89-90)
“Why did people sometimes wish dogs could talk? Laika said everything she needed to say without uttering a word. If humans could communicated this easily, there would be no wars, no grief.” (156)