Whenever my mother talks to me, she begins the conversation as if we were already in the middle of an argument.

I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.

I wanted to write stories for myself. At first it was purely an aesthetic thing about craft. I just wanted to become good at the art of something. And writing was very private.

But she never looked back with regret. There were so many ways for things to get better. -Jing-mei

We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.

Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh. -An-mei

That is the way it is with a wound. The wound begins to close in on itself, to protect what is hurting so much. And once it is closed, you no longer see what is underneath, what started the pain.