parenthood

“Dao reminds me of my father.” It wasn’t just that he was the same age as our fathers. It was also his trim and discreet appearance that made him familiar. His nondescript appearance was as much for camouflage as it was for comfort, cultivated to project a benign and anonymous professionalism. His appearance said: I am not one to take up space nor

To unpack the source of my adolescent unhappiness would be to write about my mother, which I have struggled with in this book: How deep can I dig into myself without talking about my mother? Does an Asian American narrative always have to return to the mother? When I met the poet Hoa Nguyen, the first question she asked me was, “Tell me about your

One time a different woman built my body inside her body. Then my body left hers.

IT TURNED OUT that she did know a little Greek. A few words that her father had picked up and taught her when he heard the army was coming. Mercy was one. Yes and please and what do you want? A father, teaching his daughter how to be a slave.

It was like watching a bad off-off-Broadway play where you’re the only one in the audience and both the lead characters are played by your old-ass parents.

I look forward to us being adults together. I can’t think that far ahead, and I know things never turn out how you think they will, but I’m hopeful.

I fantasized about having a mother who was also raised on Sesame Street, Happy Meals, and John Hughes movies. Maybe she could ask me white mom questions like “How are you feeling?” or say white mom things like “I love you to the moon and back.” We would share the same first language. She could help me pick out a dress that I actually liked, instead

Jack felt a wave of nearly desperate love for the boy. The emotion showed on his face as a stony grimness.

His relationship with his father had been like the unfurling of some flower of beautiful potential, which, when wholly opened, turned out to be blighted inside. Until he had been seven he had loved the tall, big-bellied man uncritically and strongly in spite of the spankings, the black-and-blues, the occasional black eye.