Daily Deductions

The recent images of Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in shaking hands made something in my chest calve and fall away, for I couldn't help but think of my father. I suspect he would have broken down and cried, seeing the North and South Korean leaders embracing and welcoming each other to step over the border and amble on their respective sovereign lands. Even I, who have spent most all of my life as an American, found that the sight of the two men treating each other with the warmth of old friends, if not brothers, inspired a deep welling of hopefulness. Who would not want a lasting and possibly reunifying peace? Yet a colder part of me remains skeptical, when looking past the enactments of the highly staged ceremonies. Kim has reportedly stated his willingness to abandon nuclear weapons. But, when he and Moon get down to the hard calculus of nuclear disarmament and troop reductions or removals, will they be strolling arm-in-arm then? Will a comprehensive agreement neatly paper over the countless shocking human-rights abuses of Kim's regime? Can a dictatorship and a democracy actually coexist?

Calve, amble, reunifying, skeptical, comprehensive. Questioning, metaphor

Growing up mixed-race in America, with a Caucasian father and a Korean mother, my mom was my access point for our Korean heritage. While she never actually taught me how to cook (Korean people tend to disavow measurements and supply only cryptic instructions along the lines of "add sesame oil until it tastes like Mom's"), she did raise me with a distinctly Korean appetite. This meant an over-the-top appreciation of good food and emotional eating. We were particular about everything: kimchi had to be perfectly sour, samgyupsal perfectly crisped; hot food had to be served piping hot or it might as well be inedible. The concept of prepping meals for the week was a ludicrous affront to our life style. We chased our cravings daily. If we wanted the same kimchi stew for three weeks straight, we relished it until a new craving emerged. We ate in accordance with the seasons and holidays. On my birthday, she'd make seaweed soup: a traditional dish for celebrating one's mother that is also what women typically eat after giving birth. When spring arrived and the weather turned, we'd bring our camp stove outdoors and fry up strips of fresh pork belly on the deck. In many ways, food was how my mother expressed her love. No matter how critical or cruel she seemed—constantly pushing me to be what she felt was the best version of myself—I could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I liked them.

Caucasian, disavow measurements, samgyupsal. Tradition, Emotional eating.

The system was Darwinian: it was deemed acceptable because the women—teen-agers, most of them—won. "It's a brutal system," Paul Ziert, the publisher of International Gymnast, told Reeves Wiedeman, who wrote a Profile of Biles for The New Yorker in 2016, before Nassar's abuse became public. "That said, so far no one has been able to come up with a system that can produce these results and be more civil." Now, of course, we know that the system allowed appalling criminal behavior to continue for years. The system needs to be blown up. But we didn't need evidence of Nassar's crimes for that to be true. Louisa Thomas

Darwinian, appalling, civil. Systemic abuse.

"I am a library expert. Nobody loves the library more than me. Here are some amazing facts that you may not know about the library! It's illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded library. You have to go whisper it to each person individually.

Expert, illegal, individually. Dramatic irony

Before the introduction of the first American public library, in 1833, there was nowhere you could go to conduct research for free. You probably just had to use the Internet. Whether they sort their books alphabetically, with the Dewey decimal system, or the Library of Congress system, all libraries agree on one thing: I should have finished my tuna-fish sandwich outside."

Introduction, research, Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress. Anachronistic

"If you were looking for a book with a title like "How to Very Quickly Learn to Defend Yourself in a Physical Fight," and you noticed a group of teen-agers in leather jackets hanging out where that book was shelved, combing their hair menacingly, you would probably take that as a good sign, right? Well, you'd be wrong. The library is a great place to go to learn about even the most niche topics. For example, did you know that the mating call of the three-wattled bellbird, when imitated by a human, will cause a librarian to say, "Sir, if you don't leave on your own, I'm getting security."

Physical Fight, menacingly, niche, imitated. cause and effect, naivety

A principal reported that whenever two children who had been fighting were brought to his office, he used a method he learned from the late child psychologist Dr. Haim Ginott. He would sit the students down at opposite ends of his desk, hand each of them a sharp pencil and a yellow legal pad, and say, "I want to know exactly what happened—in writing." Typically, one of the antagonists would protest, "But it wasn't my fault." The other would counter with "He hit me first." The principal would nod and say, "Make sure you put that in your report. I want to know—in detail—how it started, how it developed, and what each of you felt. And be sure to include your recommendations for the future!"

Psychologist, antagonists, protest, counter. Anecdote, Quotation

"Will Storr, the author of "Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us," traces selfie culture to the self-esteem movement. "This crazy idea came about in the late eighties and early nineties that, in order free ourselves of all these social problems, everything from drug abuse to domestic violence to teen-age pregnancy, we just had to believe we were special and amazing," Storr says.

Self-Obsessed, traces, self-esteem movement, domestic. Narcissistic, Naive hopefulness, easy way out.

If I'm being honest, there's a lot of anger. I'm angry at this old Korean woman I don't know, that she gets to live and my mother does not, like somehow this stranger's survival is at all related to my loss. Why is she here slurping up spicy jjamppong noodles and my mom isn't? Other people must feel this way. Life is unfair, and sometimes it helps to irrationally blame someone for it."

Slurping, unfair, irrationally blame. Blame, dealing with loss.

Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart. For those of you who don't know, H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The "H" stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to "one arm full of groceries." H Mart is where parachute kids go to get the exact brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It's where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, a beef soup that brings in the New Year. It's the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it's the only place that truly understands how much garlic you'll need for the kind of food your people eat. H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle "ethnic" section in regular grocery stores. They don't prop Goya beans next to bottles of sriracha here. Instead, you'll likely find me crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom's soy-sauce eggs and cold radish soup. Or in the freezer section, holding a stack of dumpling skins, thinking of all the hours that Mom and I spent at the kitchen table folding minced pork and chives into the thin dough. Sobbing near the dry goods, asking myself, "Am I even Korean anymore if there's no one left in my life to call and ask which brand of seaweed we used to buy?"

Specializes, tteokguk, giant vat. Anecdote, Memorialize

"In the H Mart food court, I find myself again, searching for the first chapter of the story that I want to tell about my mother. I am sitting next to a Korean mother and her son, who have unknowingly taken the table next to ol' waterworks over here. The kid dutifully gets their silverware from the counter and places it on paper napkins for the both of them. He's eating fried rice and his mom has seolleongtang, ox-bone soup. He must be in his early twenties, but his mother is still instructing him on how to eat, just like my mom used to. "Dip the onion in the paste." "Don't add too much gochujang or it'll be too salty." "Why aren't you eating the mung beans?" Some days, the constant nagging would annoy me. Woman, let me eat in peace! But, most days, I knew it was the ultimate display of a Korean woman's tenderness, and I cherished that love. The boy's mom places pieces of beef from her spoon onto his spoon. He is quiet and looks tired and doesn't talk to her much. I want to tell him how much I miss my mother. How he should be kind to his mom, remember that life is fragile and she could be gone at any moment. Tell her to go to the doctor and make sure there isn't a small tumor growing inside her."

Unknowingly, waterworks, dutifully, tenderness. Maternal care, Elder respect.

It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface."

curiosity, pressure, creativity. Ecosystem

Within the past five years, I lost both my aunt and mother to cancer. So, when I go to H Mart, I'm not just on the hunt for cuttlefish and three bunches of scallions for a buck; I'm searching for their memory. I'm collecting the evidence that the Korean half of my identity didn't die when they did. In moments like this, H Mart is the bridge that guides me away from the memories that haunt me, of chemo head and skeletal bodies and logging milligrams of hydrocodone. It reminds me of who they were before: beautiful and full of life, wiggling Chang Gu honey-cracker rings on all ten of their fingers, showing me how to suck a Korean grape from its skin and spit out the seeds.

cuttlefish, hydrocodone, wiggling Chang gu. Nostalgia, Identity

"I'll cry when I see a Korean grandmother eating seafood noodles in the food court, discarding shrimp heads and mussel shells onto the lid of her daughter's tin rice bowl. Her gray hair frizzy, cheekbones protruding like the tops of two peaches, tattooed eyebrows rusting as the ink fades out. I'll wonder what my Mom would have looked like in her seventies—if she would have the same perm that every Korean grandma gets as though it were a part of our race's evolution. I'll imagine our arms linked, her tiny frame leaning against mine as we take the escalator up to the food court. The two of us in all black, "New York style," she'd say, her image of New York still rooted in the era of "Breakfast at Tiffany's." She would carry the quilted-leather Chanel purse that she'd wanted her whole life, instead of the fake ones that she bought on the back streets of Itaewon. Her hands and face would be slightly sticky from QVC anti-aging creams. She'd wear some strange, ultra-high-top sneaker wedges that I'd disagree with. "Michelle, in Korea, every celebrity wears this one." She'd pluck the lint off my coat and pick on me—how my shoulders slumped, how I needed new shoes, how I should really start using that argan-oil treatment she bought me—but we'd be together.

discarding, cheekbones protruding, slumping. Characterisation, Autobiography

In the early days of the New Deal, the federal government set up an elaborate array of controls over the financial system. For half a century before that, the system crashed regularly; for half a century afterward, it didn't crash at all. Effective precautions created the illusion that they were not necessary, and, little by little, the government drastically scaled back what Democrats as well as Republicans had come to view as an outmoded set of constraints on banks' size, scope, and assumption of risk. Conventional wisdom is a powerful force. Even on the verge of the 2008 crisis, almost no one believed that a collapse of the entire system was possible. Dodd-Frank, by placing unregulated new markets under government supervision and by requiring big banks to behave less riskily, reversed the swing of the pendulum.

elaborate array, precautions, assumption of risk, swing of the pendulum. Correlation, Causation.

Instead, this philosophy filtered into a parenting style that created impossible expectations for the children who were raised with it. "When they fail to meet [these expectations] over and over again, they enter this state of despair that can manifest in all kinds of self-destructive behaviors," Storr says. One particular moment in the video captures the tension between a selfie's presentation of perfection and the precarious sense of self underneath: a group of women in San Francisco's Dolores Park takes exuberant selfies, throwing practiced, sunlit poses with their bottle of White Girl Rosé, looking happy and carefree. But, when asked, one of the women admits, with unmistakeable sadness, that Instagram only worsens her feelings of inadequacy: "Ultimately, for me, I think it's not that healthy.""

expectations, manifest, precarious sense of self, exuberant. Comparison, Instagram effect,

If you were going to the library for the very first time, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was a church founded by some guy named James Patterson. This is a common mistake. Really thick books have many nicknames: doorstops, tomes, nerd magnets. But, to me, they're just extremely hard to steal."

forgiven, James Patterson, tomes. Parallelism

"The library is often seen as a serious, humorless place, but did you know that if you tell the librarian that the only thing you are interested in "checking out" is her, she will sometimes give you a very pained smile before changing the subject? Many people don't want to admit this, but you can learn more by spending a single day in the library than you could spending four years loitering outside of a 7-Eleven.

humorless, pained, loitering. Double entendre, dramatic irony

For now, physical books are still more popular than e-books. But, as soon as e-books start incorporating the rest of the alphabet, physical books are probably done for. Did you know that some libraries are not even called libraries anymore but "media centers"? And did you know that knowing this will not be enough to distract library security from the fact that you are not wearing pants?"

incorporating, media centers, Misunderstanding, Misdirection