Engl072 Exam 2
Page 22 Quote: "We tagged our baggage with the family number..." (picture: 2 people holding suitcases)
Citizen 13660 - Mine Okubo
Page 68 "We had to make friends with the wild creatures in the camp, especially the spiders, mice and rats, because we were outnumbered."
Citizen 13660 - Mine Okubo
Page 7 Quote → People at the Dinner Table "I had a good home and many friends. Everything was going along fine."
Citizen 13660 - Mine Okubo
Quote Page 172: "Kite-making and flying was not limited to the youngsters." (Picture: man in overalls with Okubo, kite flying in background." Quote Page 173: "Entertainments were given on makeshift..." (Picture of Lady Dancing, audience around)
Citizen 13660 - Mine Okubo
"Mai, you're yelling. And what do you mean it's okay if I drink? What dad says that? You wouldn't say that if I was your real daughter. Why are you so upset? What happened? Nothing, okay? Nothing that wasn't supposed to, so don't worry about it. I'm not your responsibility anymore. Come on. Let's get up. You need some water. He started to put his arms around her to help lift her up, but Mai screamed, slapping his hands away. Don't touch me! Don't you ever touch me like that. She sat on the floor, her arms crossed protectively over her chest, and watched, unblinking, as his face slowly began to change. Mai realized she should say something, anything, to keep his face from doing that. But she couldn't. He stood up, looking away, his shoulders stiff. You should go to sleep. His voice emotionless and unfamiliar. You have school tomorrow. He turned and walked out of the kitchen." (169-170)
Emancipation (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"So she played it up. Remembering all the sympathies people had projected on her all her life, Mai wrote of her longing for her dead mother and native land and her resolution to return to Vietnam one day and help her former countrymen. Though difficult at first to exaggerate her emotions in such a way, Mai was soon swept up in the embellishments. Perhaps she really did think this, Mai considered as she admired the finished print out. Mrs. Ward was thrilled after reading it, almost crying, pushing away any doubts Mai had about its integrity. The applause and sympathetic smiles afterward indicated the audience thought so, too. Mai nodded tightly as Principal Baldwin patted her shoulder. When he had introduced her at the assembly, he proudly listed all the school she'd already been accepted to, the scholarships they offered, declaring her such a lucky girl with fortunate opportunities. He probably meant to be complimentary, but the words bristled her ego. Lucky. Fortunate. Had he talked to the school counselor? Did he know that Mai was still waiting on Wellesley? Did he think she was being ungrateful? It wasn't luck. Yes, she was once the poor orphan child, but she had earned this. Since middle school, she had worked to ensure a future other children already inherited." (147)
Emancipation (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"'I never had the chance to find my sister,' my mother continued. She reached over and took my hand. She squeezed hard. 'You're lucky.' I tried to pull my hand out of my grandmother's grasp, but she held on. She had lost her sister; she had lived in the aftermath of war. This was always what it came down to, in the end. My grandmother had told me once that my mother had never gotten over the death of my aunt. 'Never talk of it,' my grandmother had said. 'Never bring it up.' When I asked her what had happened, she told em my aunt had died after disobeying her. 'How?' I asked, fascinated. 'What did she do?' But my grandmother would not tell me, and there was only one story my mother ever told about her sister. When Hannah and I were children, this story had the power to make us forgive each other instantly. I memorized it and repeated it to myself as if it contained some clue about my mother, or the curse my grandmother said haunted my family." (59 or 61)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"'It's cold,' I said. 'Let's go inside.' He nodded. The tendons in his neck were taut. His breath steamed slowly around his face. Everything was inside out, or at least the cold had turned the insides of things visible. The green tomatoes were now gray and translucent, their skins puckered at the stems, still hanging from their frozen vines. 'We want you to find Hannah,' he said. 'When are you leaving?' I asked. 'As soon as possible,' my father said. 'I want to go with you.' My father shook his head. 'Find your sister,' he said. He had blamed me after the initial panic, when we discovered that Hannah hadn't been abducted or killed, but had simply left without telling us, without leaving us a way to contact her. I was her older sister, living in the same city. He thought I should have seen it coming. When I moved back home for the summer, my father grilled me about her. He wanted to know everything about the months prior to her departure: what she had looked like, what she had said. What I had noticed: why I hadn't noticed more. He was already sick then, but I didn't know it yet. I wonder if Hannah would have been able to pick up and leave like that if she had known." (2)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"'We are reporting her dead.' She did not know how to make sense of it. My auntie had been living in a girl's dorm. It was her second year of college. The North Koreans had been kidnapping people for years, especially girls, and this had intensified in the last several months. And then the North Koreans had raided my auntie's dorm and carried her off. Three days later, my mother's family made a burial mound for my auntie in the mountains near where our ancestors lay. They piled great heaps of dirt on top of an empty coffin. My mother shivered, and thought of the silent bomb she and her sister had discovered next to the abandoned well. 'What if she comes back,' my mother asked, 'and find out what we've done?' Her uncle turned and gripped her arm. He wanted her to understand the situation, he said. His words were terse. She would never be able to marry, to leave Korea, to get a job, if anyone found out what happened to her sister. Even worse, if they knew she had a sister in the North, her entire family could fall under suspicion themselves, and be taken away to disappear. My mother understood then that her uncle was afraid for himself and his own children. She imagined the rest of her family vanishing, one by one, leaving four empty mounds beside each other on a hill. Did she understand? My uncle asked. Did she understand what had to be done? My mother nodded yes, but she thought to herself, We are killing her." (64-65 or 66-67)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"Erin stepped forward. She reached out and pushed my face with the palm of her hand, hard, so it hurt. 'Look at Janie's face,' she said. 'It's flat as paper.' My classmates laughed. 'Why don't you go back to Japan with the rest of the robots?' Erin continued. She knew I wasn't from Japan. 'Why don't you go back to jail where your father is?' I said. Erin gasped. Her face screwed up tight and small, and she reached her arm back. When she swung, I caught her right arm and then her left. I held her arms back and she tried to hit me again. I remembered the story she'd told about her father and how the Chinese mad had yelled, 'Ching chong ching chong,' and for no reason I could think of, I yelled this at her as loud as I could." (107 or 110-111)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"In sixth grade, Japanese cars flooded the market, and the auto industry in Michigan went into crisis. That year the father of a girl in my class killed a Chinese man; he claimed he thought his victim was Japanese. With six witnesses to murder, the judge let him off with manslaughter and a fine." (102)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"The year I became a math major, Hannah and I started growing apart. She never understood my chosen field, and considered it a defection to my father's fortress of reason and lopgic. "You can't even divide up a bill," she said. "You're horrible with numbers." I tried to tell her about complex and imaginary numbers, primes and transcendentals, numbers with families and personalities, but she rolled her eyes. "I Don't know how you can think any of that is important," she said. She was studying to become a biologist, deep in the gunk if life and committed to saving the Earth, and could see no beauty in what I did. But math had come with me from Korea..."Math lasts." " (7-8)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"This was the story my mother had always told to make peace between my sister and me, and now when my mother said, 'I want to tell you a story about your auntie,' I thought she would tell it again. But instead she told me another story I never heard before. When the time came for my aunt to go to college, my grandmother was in the middle of a long illness, and my mother begged her not to leave. To go would be selfish. My mother was too young to keep house herself. 'How can you leave all this behind?' She swept her arm around to include their house, the trees behind it, their mother, their brother, herself. 'You will be sorry.' she said. She did not understand then the dread with which her sister faced the threat of being bound forever to this house, with all its reminders of what had been lost. Of course my auntie left." (63 or 65)
Forgotten Country - Catherine Chung
"By this time, Kazuyuki Matsumoto was on the road that would lead inexorably, to Las Vegas. At first, in that all-Japanese milieu, he had taken courage and tried courting a Nisei spinster who worked as a waitress in the same mess hall. Once he had even dared to take her a gift of a bag of apples, bought at the camp canteen; but the woman already had her eye on a fellow waiter several years her junior. She refused the apples and proceeded to ensnare the younger man with a desperation which he was simply not equipped to combat. After this rejection Kazuyuki Matsumoto had returned to his passion for flower cards. What else was there to do? He had tried passing the time, as some of the other men did, by making polished canes of mesquite and ironwood, by carving and enameling little birds and fish to be used as brooches, but he was not truly cut out for such artistic therapy. Flower cards were what beguiled - that occasional unbeatable combination of four cards: the pink cherry blossoms in full, festive bloom; the black pines with the stork standing in between; the white moon rising in a red sky over the black hill; and the red-and-black crest symbolizing the paulownia tree in flower."
Las Vegas Charley - Hisaye Yamamoto
"Then had come the day of decision. The government announced that all Japanese wanting to return to Japan (with their American-born children) would be sent to another camp in northern California to await the sailings of the Swedish Gripsholm. The removal was also mandatory for all young men of draft age who did not wish to serve in the Unites States Army and chose to renounce their American citizenship. Kazuyuki Matsumoto, busy with the cooking and absorbed in flower cards, was not too surprised when Noriyuki decided in favor of Japan. At least there would not be another son dead in Europe; the boy would be a comfort to his grandmother in her old age. As for himself, he would be quite content to remain in this camp the rest of his life - free food, free housing, friends, flower cards; what more could life offer? It was true that he had partially lost his hearing in one ear from standing by those hot stoves on days of unbearable heat, but that was a small complaint. The camp hospital had provided free treatment, free medicines, free cotton balls to stuff in his bad ear. Kazuyuki Matsumoto was far from agreeing with one angry man who had one day, annoyed with a severe dust storm, shouted "America is going to pay for every bit of his suffering! Taking away my farm and sending me to this hell! Japan will win the war and then we'll see who puts who where!" (80)
Las Vegas Charley - Hisaye Yamamoto
"One evening my two brothers and I race home from the neighbors. We have about reached the far end of our stable when we hear a car coming up the road. We separate to opposite sides of the road and continue running, my brothers on the side nearest our property and I on the other. The car speeds by and all of a sudden, there is Jemo lying over there on the shoulder of the road. He does not move. His eyes are closed. His still face is abraded by dirt and gravel. I run the fifty or so steps past the stable and tall barn. The house is set back from the road, from where I, terror-stricken, scream my anguished message, "Jemo shinda, Jemo shinda!" (94)
Life Among the Oil Fields - Hisaye Yamamoto
"When I look back on that episode, the helpless anger of my father and my mother is my inheritance. But my anger is more intricate than theirs, warped by all that has transpired in between. For instance, I sometimes see the arrogant couple from down the road as young and beautiful, their speeding open roadster as definitely and stunningly red. They roar by; their tinkling laughter, like a long silken scarf, is borne back by the wind. I gaze after them from the side of the road, where I have darted to dodge the swirling dust and spitting gravel. And I know that their names are Scott and Zelda." (95)
Life Among the Oil Fields - Hisaye Yamamoto
"In a dense forest forty-five miles outside of Ho Chi Minh City, a guide in faded green army attire leads the tour group to an open-sided hut. They sit in dusty plastic chairs while a woman in black pajamas turns on the big-screen television. Beautiful shade trees and smiling, simple Vietnamese peasants, nature, serenity, safety in the town of Cu Chi. And then the looming American B-52s unleash their bombs. Bursts of gunfire crackle from the television speakers. Clouds of smoke overwhelm the screen, making the peasants on screen cry and suffer. Out of the dust, the valiant Communist liberators emerge. Young, beautiful, courageous faces. They will rescue their country. The female guide must notice the audience fidgeting uncomfortably. She appears to expect this, laughs as she turns the video off, explaining that it is old, times have changed, and everyone, American and Vietnamese, are all friends now. For their paying friends, Cu Chi Tunnels, the 250-kilometer underground headquarters of the Viet Cong during the war, is now a popular tourist attraction. The maze of tunnels especially widened to accommodate larger Western sightseers, a recreational firing range where visitors can shoot AK-47 rifles, souvenir booths selling Zippo lighters, pens made from bullets, rubber sandals, keepsake T-shirts." (229-230)
Motherland (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"The bus is quiet. They are normally a noisy, awkward band of travelers: a mix created solely by coincidental vacation times. They are mostly families, some with small children. One family is Vietnamese, the Vus, who immigrated to America shortly after the Fall and are returning for their first visit. There's a senior couple, the Lewises, who are spending their retirement savings to see the world. There are three U.S. war veteran buddies who never seem embarrassed by their prolific dropping of words like gooks and 'Nam. The old men stare at Huan when they think he's not looking, almost tempting Huan to ask if they left behind their own bastard child in Vietnam" (218)
Motherland (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"It was hot, probably the hottest day of the year, and Rosie's blouse stuck damply to her back even under the protection of the canvas. But she worked as efficiently as a flawless machine and kept the stalls heaped, with one part of her mind listening in to the parental murmuring about the heat and tomatoes and with another part planning the exact words she would say to Jesus when he drove up with the first load of the afternoon. But when at last she saw that the pick-up was coming, her hands went berserk and the tomatoes started falling in the wrong stalls, and her father said, "Hey, hey! Rosie, watch what you're doing!" (15-16)
Seventeen Syllables - Hisaye Yamamoto
"And from the place in the fields where she stood, frightened and vacillating, Rosie saw her father enter the house. Soon Mr. Kuroda came out alone, putting on his coat. Mr. Kuroda got into his car and emerged, also alone, something in his arms (it was the picture, she realized), and, going over to the bathhouse woodpile, he threw the picture on the ground and picked up the axe. Smashing the picture, glass and all (she heard the explosion faintly), he reached over for the kerosene that was used to encourage the bath fire and poured it over the wreckage. I am dreaming, Rosie said to herself, I am dreaming, but her father, having made sure that his act of cremation was irrevocable, was even then returning to the fields." (18).
Seventeen Syllables - Hisaye Yamamoto
"As they rode homeward silently, Rosie, sitting between, felt a rush of hate for both - for her mother for begging, for her father for denying her mother. I wish this old Ford would crash, right now, she thought, then immediately, no, no, I wish my father would laugh, but it was too late: already the vision had passed through her mind of the green pick-up crumpled in the dark against one of the mighty eucalyptus trees they were just riding past, of the three contorted, bleeding bodies, one of them hers." (12).
Seventeen Syllables - Hisaye Yamamoto
"So Rosie and her father lived for awhile with two women, her mother and Ume Hanazono. Her mother (Tome Hayashi by name) kept house, cooked, washed, and, along with her husband and the Carrascos, the Mexican family hired for the harvest, did her ample share of picking tomatoes out in the sweltering fields and boxing them in tidy strata in the cool packing shed. Ume Hanazono, who came to life after the dinner dishes were done, was an earnest, muttering stranger who often neglected speaking when spoken to and stayed busy at the parlor table as late as midnight scribbling with pencil on scratch paper or carefully copying characters on good paper with her fat, pale green Parker." (9)
Seventeen Syllables - Hisaye Yamamoto
"And after we emerged from the latrine, Elsie and I slapping mosquitoes in the warm, gathering dusk, sat on the stoop of her apartment and talked awhile, jealously of the scintillating life Miss Sasagawara had led until now and nostalgically of the few ballets we had seen in the world outside. (How faraway Los Angeles seemed!) But we ended up as we always did, agreeing that our mission in life, pushing twenty as we were, was first to finish college somewhere when and if the war ever ended and we were free again, and then to find good jobs and two nice, clean young men, preferably handsome, preferably rich, who would cherish us forever and a day" (21).
The Legend of Miss Sasagawara - Hisaye Yamamoto
"Even in that unlikely place of wind, sand, and heat, it was easy to imagine Miss Sasagawara a decorative ingredient of some ballet. Her daily costume, brief and fitting closely to her trifling waist, generously billowing below, and bringing together arrestingly rich colors like mustard yellow and forest green, appeared to have been cut from a coarse-textured homespun; her shining hair was so long it wound twice about her head to form a coronet; her face was delicate and pale, with a fine nose, pouting bright mouth, and glittering eyes; and her measured walk said, "Look, I'm walking!" as though walking were not a common but a rather special thing to be doing." (20)
The Legend of Miss Sasagawara - Hisaye Yamamoto
"My introduction, less spectacular, to the Rev. Sasagawara came later, as I noticed him, a slight and fragile-looking old man, in the Block mess hall (where I worked as a waitress, and Elsie, too) or in the laundry room or going to and from the latrine. Sometimes he would be farther out, perhaps going to the post office or canteen or to visit friends in another Block or on some business to the Administration buildings, but wherever he was headed, however doubtless his destination, he always seemed to be wandering lostly. This may have been because he walked so slowly, with such negligible steps, or because he wore perpetually an air of bemusement, never talking directly to a person, as though being what he was, he could not stop for an instant his meditation on the higher life." (21-22)
The Legend of Miss Sasagawara - Hisaye Yamamoto
"'I broke my hip!' Mrs. Croft announced, as if no time had passed. 'Oh dear, madame.' 'I fell off the bench!' 'I am so sorry, madame.' 'It was the middle of the night! Do you know what I did, boy?' I shook my head. 'I called the police!' She stared up at the ceiling and grinned sedately, exposing a crowded row of long gray teeth. Not one was missing. 'What do you say to that, boy?' As stunned as I was, I knew what I had to say. With no hesitation at all, I cried out, 'Splendid!' Mala laughed then. Her voice was full of kindness, her eyes bright with amusement. I had never heard her laugh before, and it was loud enough so that Mrs. Croft had heard, too. She turned to Mala and glared." (194-195)
The Third and Final Continent (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"The woman bellowed, 'A flag on the moon, boy! I heard it on the radio! Isn't that splendid?' 'Yes, madame.' But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, 'Say "splendid"!' I was both baffled and somewhat insulted by the request. It reminded me of the way I was taught multiplication tables as a child, repeating after the master, sitting cross-legged, without shoes or pencils, on the floor of my one-room Tollygunge school. It also reminded me of my wedding, when I had repeated endless Sanskrit verses after the priest, verses I barely understood, which joined me to my wife. I said nothing. 'Say "splendid"!' the woman bellowed once again. 'Splendid," I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top of my lungs, so she could hear. I am soft-spoken by nature and was especially reluctant to raise my voice to an elderly woman whom I had only met moments ago, but she did not appear to be offended. If anything the reply pleased her because her next command was: 'Go see the room!'" (179-180)
The Third and Final Continent (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"I did a flip off the fire escape and ran across the schoolyard. The day was a great eye, and it was not paying much attention to me now. I could disappear from the sun; I could turn quickly sideways and slip into a different world. It seemed I could run faster at this time, and by evening I would be able to fly. As the afternoon wore on we could run into the forbidden places - the boys' lavatory and look at the urinals. The only time during school hours I had crossed the boys' yard was when a flatbed truck with a giant thing covered with canvas and tied down with ropes had parked across the street. The children had told one another that it was a gorilla in captivity; we couldn't decide whether the sign said 'Trail of the Gorilla' or 'Trial of the Gorilla.' The thing was as big as a house. The teachers couldn't stop us from hysterically rushing to the fence and clinging to the wire mesh. Now I ran across the boys' yard to the Cyclone fence and thought about the hair that I had seen sticking out of the canvas. It was going to be summer soon, so you could feel that freedom coming on too." (174-175)
The Woman Warrior - A Song for a Barbarian Reed Pipe - Maxine Hong Kingston
"They set out at gray dawn, driving between the grape trees, which hunched like dwarfs in the fields. Gnomes in serrated outfits that blew in the morning wind came out of the earth, came up in rows and columns. Everybody was only half awake. 'A long time ago,' began Brave Orchid, 'the emperors had four wives, one at each point of the compass, and they lived in four palaces. The Empress of the West would connive for power, but the Empress of the East was good and kind and full of light. You are the Empress of the East, and the Empress of the West has imprisoned the Earth's Emperor in the Western Palace. And you, the good Empress of the East, come out of the dawn to invade her land and free the Emperor. You must break the strong spell she has cast on him that has lost him the East.'" (143)
The Woman Warrior - At the Western Palace - Maxine Hong Kingston
"'Don't let your father know that I told you. He denies her. Now that you have started to menstruate, what happened to her could happen to you. Don't humiliate us. Your wouldn't like to be forgotten as if you had never been born. The villagers are watchful.' Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strength to establish realities. Those in emigrant generation who could not reassert brute survival died young and far from home. Those of us in the first American generations have had to figure out how the invisible world the emigrants built around our childhoods fit in solid America." (5)
The Woman Warrior - No Name Woman - Maxine Hong Kingston
"'You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you In China your father had a sister who killed herself. She jumped into the family well. We say that your father has all brothers because it is af she had never been born. 'In 1924 just a few days after our village celebrated seventeen hurry-up weddings--to make sure that every young men who went 'out on the road' would responsibly come home--your father and his brothers and your grandfather and his brothers and your aunt's new husband sailed for America, the Gold Mountain. It was your grandfather's last trip. Those lucky enough to get contracts waved goodbye from the decks. They fed and guarded the stowaways and helped them off in Cuba, New York, Bali, Hawaii. 'We'll meet in California next year,' they said. All of them sent money home." (3)
The Woman Warrior - No Name Woman - Maxine Hong Kingston
"It could very well have been, however, that my aunt did not take subtle enjoyment of her friend, but, a wild woman, kept rollicking company. Imagining her free with sex doesn't fit, though. I don't know any women like that, or men either. Unless I see her life branching into mine, she gives me no ancestral help." (8)
The Woman Warrior - No Name Woman - Maxine Hong Kingston
"I searched the house, hunting out people for trial. I came upon a locked room. When I broke down the door, I found women, cowering, whimpering women. I heard shrill insect noises and scurrying. They blinked weakly at me like pheasants that have been raised in the dark for soft meat. The servants who walked the ladies had abandoned them, and they could not escape on their little bound feet. Some crawled away from me, using their elbows to pull themselves along. These women would not be good for anything. I called the villagers to come identify any daughters they wanted to take home, but no one claimed any. I gave each woman a bagful of rice, which they sat on. They rolled the bags to the road. They wandered away like ghosts. Later, it would be said, they turned into the band of swordswomen who were a mercenary army. They did not wear men's clothes like me, but rode as women in black and red dresses. They bought up girl babies so that many poor families welcomed their visitations. When slave girls and daughters-in-law ran away, people would say they joined these witch amazons. They killed men and boys. I myself never encountered such women and could not vouch for their reality." (44-45)
The Woman Warrior - White Tigers - Maxine Hong Kingston
"It is confusing that my family was not the poor to be championed. They were executed like the barons in the stories, when they were not barons. It is confusing that birds tricked us." (51)
The Woman Warrior - White Tigers - Maxine Hong Kingston
"Menstrual days did not interrupt my training; I was as strong as on any other day. 'You're now an adult,' explained the old woman on the first one, which happened halfway through my stay on the mountain. 'You can have children.' I had thought I had cut myself when jumping over my swords, one made of steel and the other carved out of a single block of jade. 'However,' she added, 'we are asking you to put off children for a few more years.' 'Then can I use the control you taught me and stop this bleeding?' 'No. You don't stop shitting and pissing,' she said. 'It's the same with the blood. Let it run." ('Let it walk' in Chinese) (30-31)
The Woman Warrior - White Tigers - Maxine Hong Kingston
"We were better equipped than many founders of dynasties had been when they walked north to dethrone an emperor; they had been peasants like us. Millions of us had laid our hoes down on the dry ground and faced north. We sat in the fields, from which the dragon had withdrawn its moisture, and sharpened these hoes. Then, though it be ten thousand miles away, we walked to the palace. We would report to the emperor. The emperor, who sat facing south, must have been very frightened - peasants everywhere walking day and night toward the capital, toward Peiping. But the last emperors of dynasties must not have been facing in the right direction, for they would have seen us and not let us get this hungry. We would not have had to shout our grievances. The peasants would crown as emperor a farmer who knew the earth or a beggar who understood hunger." (36-37)
The Woman Warrior - White Tigers - Maxine Hong Kingston
"'No,' Twinkle said, her voice suddenly small. 'This is our house. We own it together. The statue is a part of our property.' She had begun to shiver. A small pool of bathwater had collected around her ankles. He went to shut a window, fearing that she would catch cold. Then he noticed that some of the water dripping down her hard blue face was tears. 'Oh God, Twinkle, please, I didn't mean it,' He had never seen her cry before, had never seen such sadness in her eyes. She didn't turn away or try to stop the tears; instead she looked strangely at peace. For a moment she closed her lids, pale and unprotected compared to the blue that caked the rest of her face. Sanjeev felt ill, as if he had eaten either too much or too little." (149)
This Blessed House (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"Behind an overgrown forsythia bush was a plaster Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood draped over her head in the manner of an Indian bride. Twinkle grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and began wiping away the dirt staining the statue's brow." (146)
This Blessed House (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"He studied the items on the mantel. It puzzled him that each was in its own way so silly. Clearly they lacked a sense of sacredness. He was further puzzled that Twinkle, who normally displayed good taste, was so charmed. These objects meant something to Twinkle, but they meant nothing to him. They irritated him. 'We should call the Realtor. Tell him there's all this nonsense left behind. Tell him to take it away.' 'Oh, Sanj.' Twinkle groaned. 'Please. I would feel terrible throwing them away. Obviously they were important to the people who used to live here. It would feel, I don't know, sacrilegious or something." (138)
This Blessed House (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"Sanjeev had found the house on his own before leaving for the wedding, for a good price, in a neighborhood with a fine school system. He was impressed by the elegant curved suitcase with its wrought-iron banister, and the dark wooden wainscoting, and the solarium overlooking rhododendron bushes, and the solid brass 22, which also happened to be the date of his birth, nailed impressively to the vaguely Tudor facade. There were two working fireplaces, a two-car garage, and an attic suitable for converting into extra bedrooms if, the realtor mentioned, the need should arise. By then Sanjeev had already made up his mind, was determined that he and Twinkle should live there together, forever, and so he had not bothered to notice the switch plates covered with biblical stickers, or the transparent decal of the Virgin on the half shell, as Twinkle liked to call it, adhered to the window in the master bedroom. When, after moving in, he tried to scrape it off, he scratched the glass." (145)
This Blessed House (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"Do you see something you like, the woman asked. Kim didn't respond, only glanced up to inspect the woman's own bracelet -- green. Lots of Vietnamese women wore them. Tradition said the longer you wore the bracelet, the more darker and more vivid the color became, indicating the wearer's maturity. It was a common gift between family members. Mai had gotten one from her foster mother for her sixteenth birthday. How did you know I was Vietnamese? Kim asked. Hardly anyone could tell unless they were looking for it. But this woman knew right away, spoke to her in the native language the very first time. Aren't you? Yes. I can tell, the women said. The way you talk and carry yourself. It's obvious. But I was raised here, Kim said, and, before she could stop herself, I'm an orphan." (39)
We Should Never Meet (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"Do you live nearby? A few blocks from Brookhurst. With your parents? No, I live with my brothers. What are you studying in school? Economics. A businessman, how wonderful! Well, not yet. Nevertheless, that's excellent. Little Saigon needs more businessmen. Economy is the foundation to any strong community. The boy smiled, Bac Nguyen realized, for the first time since they met. I think so, too. Your parents must be proud. The boy's smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. They died, Bac, the boy said, in Vietnam. Bac Nguyen stopped walking. I'm so sorry. Thank you. That must have been terrible, Bac Nguyen said, and to come to a new country. At least you have your brothers. Yes, I'm very thankful for them. We've lost so many people. Bac Nguyen placed his arm on the boy's, and they began walking again. My wife and son died during the war, too. They've taken so much from us, the boy said. Yes, the Communists were heartless. Bac Nguyen still couldn't control the rush of blood to his head remembering that Communist sniper who gunned Anh down that day so long ago on the beach in Vung Tau. You misunderstand Bac, the boy said. I wasn't meaning the communists. Oh, Bac Nguyen said, slightly confused. I just assumed --- I was talking about the Americans." (93-94)
Visitors (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"Holding the necklace up to eye level, Bac Nguyen took the boy's hand and pressed his palm open. He let the necklace slowly drop into a loose coil in the boy's hand. My daughter never wanted her mother's jewelry. It was never her taste, she prefers more Western styles. After a long moment, the boy closed his mouth, swallowing hard. Are you sure? It's only one necklace. I have plenty of others to remember her by. Bac Nguyen felt confident for his rather bold generosity. All this beautiful jewelry, wasting away in a box. For one to be shown off again, worn proudly on a young woman's neck as a symbol of this boy's love for her, that seemed appropriate. The boy had to go. He had a class at five-thirty he couldn't miss." (99)
Visitors (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"When he turned back, the boy was shifting on his heels, looking around the house awkwardly. He sympathized with the boy's discomfort. The house was pristinely composed -- like a museum -- with the complicated, oversized entertainment system in the family room and decorative china and glassware carefully placed on neatly dusted shelves in the living room. While Bac Nguyen always enjoyed a handsome home -- his own in Vietnam before the war had been rather large and impressive -- he felt a detached coldness in his daughter's house. Perhaps because it was in the States, and everything in it was essentially American. He didn't know. He hoped he would get over the feeling in time and come to see this unfamiliar place as his home." (95-96)
Visitors (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"I don't have that kind of money to give out. Yes you do, I've seen it in the register, and there's lots more in the safe. The woman's eyes narrowed. This is inappropriate. I can't give you any of that money. Why not? You're practically a stranger. I am not. Yes, you are. Then why did you give this to me? Kim asked, holding up her bracelet. I know you only give this to family. Mothers to daughters, I know. But the woman shook her head, her face located somewhere between confusion and disgust. I gave that to you because I felt sorry for you, the woman said slowly, like she was talking to someone she hadn't been getting to know for the last three weeks. You kept staring at it so pitifully. That's all. Kim stared at her, conscious through every blink of her eyes the woman was changing into something else. Once familiar, the woman became a stranger again. Her features were not so similar to Kim's, her face, body language not so loving. She'd been wrong. Kim hated being wrong." (49-50)
We Should Never Meet (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"She looked at Kim's hands and smiled. You like that bracelet. Kim set it down quickly. Do you want it? Kim hesitated. I can't afford it. I know, you're saving up for the apartment. Take it, a gift from me. Kim didn't move. Take it, the woman said again, picking up the bracelet and pressing it into Kim's hands. Think of it as an early birthday present, okay? Kim started at her, stunned. She didn't remember telling the woman her birthday was coming up. Only a slight struggle, and together they pushed the bracelet over the wrist bone of Kim's left hand. See? The woman said, as they both admired the pale sea green of the jade. It's lovely." (43-44)
We Should Never Meet (We Should Never Meet) - Aimee Phan
"'What is it, Lilia?' 'A glass for the Indian man.' 'Mr. Pirzada won't be coming today. More importantly, Mr. Pirzada is no longer considered Indian,' my father announced, brushing salt from the cashews out of his trim black beard. 'Not since Partition. Our country was divided. 1947.' When I said I thought that was the date of India's independence from Britain, my father said, 'That too. One moment we were free and then we were sliced up,' he explained, drawing an X with his finger on the countertop, 'like a pie. Hindus here, Muslims there. Dacca no longer belong to us.' He told me that during Partition Hindus and Muslims had set fire to each other's homes. For many, the idea of eating in the other's company was still unthinkable." (25)
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"In the Autumn of 1971 a man used to come to our house, bearing confections in his pocket and hopes of ascertaining the life or death of his family. His name was Mr. Pirzada, and he came from Dacca, now the capital of Bangladesh, but then a part of Pakistan. That year Pakistan was engaged in civil war. The eastern frontier, where Dacca was located, was fighting for autonomy from from the ruling regime in the west. In March, Dacca had been invaded, torched, and shelled by the Pakistani army. Teachers were dragged onto streets and shot, women dragged into barracks and raped. By the end of the summer, three hundred thousand people were said to have died. In Dacca Mr. Pirzada had a three-story home, a lectureship in botany at the university, a wife of twenty years, and seven daughters between the ages of six and sixteen whose names all began with the letter A. 'Their mother's idea,' he explained one day, producing from his wallet a black-and-white picture of seven girls at a picnic, their braids tied with ribbons, sitting cross-legged in a row, eating chicken curry off of banana leaves. 'How am I to distinguish? Ayesha, Amira, Amina, Aziza, you see the difficulty." (24)
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"Mr Pirzada handed me his coat, for it was my job to hang it on the rack at the bottom of the stairs. It was made of finely checkered gray-and-blue wool, with a striped lining and horn buttons, and carried in its weave the faint smell of limes. There was no recognizable tags inside, only a hand-stitched label with the phrase 'Z. Sayeed, Suitors' embroidered on it in cursive with glossy black thread. On certain days a birch or maple leaf was tucked into a pocket. He unlaced his shoes and lined them against the blackboard; a golden paste clung to the toes and heels, the result of walking through our damp, unraked lawn. Relieved of his trappings, he grazed my throat with his short, restless fingers, the way a person feels for solidity behind a wall before driving a nail. Then he followed my father to the living room, where the television was tuned to the local news. As soon as they were seated my mother appeared from the kitchen with a plate of mincemeat kebabs with coriander chutney. Mr. Pirzada popped one into his mouth." (28)
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"We went from house to house, walking along pathways and pressing doorbells. Some people had switched off all their lights for effect, or strung rubber bats in their windows. At the McIntyre's a coffin was placed in front of the door, and Mr. McIntyre rose from in its silence, his face covered with chalk, and deposited a fistful of candy corns into our sacks. Several people told me that they never seen an Indian witch before. Others performed the transaction without comment. As we paved our way with the parallel beams of our flashlights we saw eggs cracked in the middle of the road, and cars covered with shaving cream, and toilet paper garlanding the branches of trees. By the time we reached Dora's house our hands were chapped from carrying our bulging burlap bags, and our feet were sore and swollen. Her mother gave us bandages for our blisters and served us warm cider and caramel corn. She reminded me to call my parents and to tell them I had arrived safely, and when I did I could hear the television in the background. My mother did not seem particularly relieved to hear from me. When I replaced the phone on the receiver it occurred to me that the television wasn't on at Dora's house at all. Her father was lying on the couch, reading a magazine, with a glass of wine on the coffee table, and there was saxophone music playing on the stereo." (39)
When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine (Interpreter of the Maladies) - Jhumpa Lahiri
"For it was true, they all looked alike. Black hair. Slanted eyes. High cheekbones. Thick glasses. Thin lips. Bad teeth. Unknowable. Inscrutable. That was him, over there. The little yellow man." (49)
When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka
"The sign had appeared overnight. On billboards and trees and the backs of the bus-stop benches. It hung in the window of Woolworth's. It hung by the entrance to the YMCA. It was stapled to the door of the municipal court and nailed, at eye level, to every telephone pole along University Avenue. The woman was returning a book to the library when she saw the sign in a post office window. It was a sunny day in Berkeley in the spring of 1942 and she was wearing new glasses and could see everything clearly for the first time in weeks. She no longer had to squint but she squinted out of habit anyway. She read the sign from top to bottom and then, still squinting, she took out a pen and read the sign from top to bottom again. The print was small and dark. Some of it was tiny. She wrote down a few words on the back of a bank receipt, then turned around and went home and began to pack." (3)
When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka
"Tomorrow she and the children would be leaving. She did not know where they were going or how long they would be gone or who would be living in their house while they were away. She knew only that tomorrow they had to go. There were things they could take with them: bedding and linen, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, cups, clothes. These were the words she had written down on the back of the bank receipt. Pets were not allowed. That was what the sign had said. It was late April. It was the fourth week of the fifth month of the war and the woman, who did not always follow the rules, followed the rules. She gave the cat to the Greers next door. She caught the chicken that had been running wild in the yard since the fall and snapped its neck beneath the handle of a broomstick. She plucked out the feathers and set the carcass into a pan of cold water in the sink." (8-9)
When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka
"When the War Relocation Authority announced it would be distributing military surplus from the First World War she stood in line for two hours and brought back earmuffs and canvas leggings and three size 44 navy pea coats. The boy put on a coat and stared at his reflection in the broken mirror. His hair was long and uncombed and his face was dark brown from the sun. The coat hung down past his knees. He narrowed his eyes and stuck out his two front teeth. I predge arregiance to the frag... Whatsamalla, Shorty? Solly. So so solly." (87)
When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka
"You've been a good dog," she said. "You've been a good white dog." Somewhere in the distance a telephone rang. White Dog barked. "Hush," she said. White Dog grew quiet. "Now roll over," she said. White Dog rolled over and looked up at her with his good eye. "Play dead," she said. White Dog turned his head to the side and closed his eyes. His paws went limp. The woman picked up the large shovel that was leaning against the trunk of the tree. She lifted it high in the air with both hands and brought the blade down swiftly on his head. White Dog's body shuddered twice and his hind legs kicked out into the air, as though he were trying to run. Then he grew still. A trickle of blood seeped out from the corner of his mouth. She untied him from the tree and let out a deep breath. The shovel had been the right choice. Better, she thought, than a hammer. (11)
When the Emperor was Divine - Julie Otsuka
