Yao Niang, the first tiny-footed lady. When that woman.
I accepted these limitations, knowing that my worth was based entirely on the child growing inside me.
To protect my heart, this is what I would have to do with Snow Flower. I couldn’t let anyone know I was dying from anguish that she no longer loved me.
She’s grabbed onto old traditions-outdated traditions- in the same way I latch onto them now: as a means of survival, as a way to hang on to ghost memories.
I’d never waste the hours of light in the darkness of slumber.
My home is here with this family I’ve built from scraps of tragedy.
They say nothing to me in a very loud way.
No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments. The spark when we first meet. Laughter and tears shared. Secrets packed away to be treasured, hoarded, and protected. The wonder that someone can be so different from you and yet still understand your heart in a way no one.
As A-ma said, every story, every dream, every waking minute of our lives is filled with one fateful coincidence after another.
Don’t blame yourself for things that maybe happened,” she said.
Man becomes wiser and more mature through life experience. The same can be said of tea.
As the eldest daughter, I had always been responsible for my younger siblings. Now I had to provide their food and clothing and be a second mother to them. My father was no help. He was a kind man, but he shuddered under the added responsibility. Too often I found him outside, alone with his sadness. No man was built to shoulder the full weight of feeding and caring for his family. That was why he had a wife and daughters.
How can the moon be scooped from the water’s surface, or flowers be plucked from the void?
Sometimes you must experience heartache to have a treasured result.
Every mother must leave her children to work, and every mother suffers, bu we do it.
Well, Chinese used to be seen as low, right? Working on the railroad, in laundries, and stuff like that. Now they’re seen as smart and wealthy. I mean, isn’t there the stereotype of the model minority? I read an article for school that said people like us – not you, Dr. Rosen – are now labeled as inquisitive, persistent, and ambitious. With ingenuity, fortitude, and cleverness.
I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.
My mother had died in the sea, but we could never forget that it gave us life.
The government labels the haenyeo a cultural heritage treasure – something dying out that must be preserved, if only in memory. How does it feel to be the last of the last?” If they’re academics, they’ll want to talk about Jeju’s matrifocal culture, explaining, “It’s not a matriarchy. Rather, it’s a society focused on women.
I grew up believing that rice was to nourish and that tea was to heal. Now I understand that tea is also to connect and to dream. That seduction is deeper and more profound than could happen with any man.