When Michael was a child, the family lived in a coal mining town called Mine Number Five. His parents, who had survived the harshest years of poverty and political turmoil, had only “one goal in life,” Michael said: “to pass the days normally.” But Michael was desperate to get out of Mine Number Five. In a passage he used for language practice, he wrote: I couldn’t stand eating steamed bread, leftover greens, and sweet potatoes every day.
