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America was ruining everything. Ruining it with her embarrassing heat, with the sticky swelter between her fat white legs.
“His mouth keeps writing checks that his fists can’t cash.”
The key, Barbra decided, was to be unbothered by the opinions of others and be always certain that your own choices were correct.
The Communists had it all wrong. It wasn’t the rich who were imprisoned by their possessions, it was the poor.
All around was sand, just sand, a few degrees away from melting into glass.
“A friend of mine, she lost her mom at around the same time, when she was thirteen. She said the only true thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about their mom dying. We were . . . I don’t know, it’s weird. I think we were laughing about something. We were trying to joke about it, because that’s what nobody else ever does, right? And then she looked up at me, and said, ‘That bitch just keeps on dying.’”
Zin’s back, right? It’s amazing. Smooth. Like velvet! Like tits! Velvet tits!”
Communists. Worrying, Saina realized, was a luxury in itself. The luxury of purpose.
Being homeless was really boring. That was probably why homeless people spent all the money they panhandled on cheap highs—how else would they get through the days?
How were they not dead? They weren’t dead. They weren’t dead and they didn’t want to be!
burger bags. She looked up at her father. No one looked that attractive from below; that’s why short people should never be allowed to be photographers.
In English class this year they had to memorize a poem, a Tennyson poem about a king. She liked memorizing things. She whispered it to herself now. Though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in something . . . um . . . To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
they’d rented a purple PT Cruiser. It looked like something a hick in a cartoon would drive, with a billiard ball for a gearshift,
Somewhere in Pennsylvania, as the sun set and no moon rose to take its place, Grace knew with a calm certainty that her life was going to ripple ever outward until it encompassed the entire world.
“It was a long trip. America is very wide.”
Still, she cringed. There was something about introducing a new boyfriend to her family that always felt rude, like she was putting her sex life on display.
She’d been selfish, hadn’t she? Returning one out of every five of Grace’s phone calls, leaving her father, never allowing Barbra to be anything approaching a mother. She owed them these things. In the end, all we had were the people to whom we were beholden.
“I only need to say the thing one time, not two,” said Barbra.
Hi, darling children 1, 2, 3— How are you? I landed in Beijing today. I am sorry there was not a time to say goodbye before I leave. Tomorrow I will travel to our old home, 老家. Do not be worried, be happy. Remember, if you go out in sunshine put on sunscreen, you do not want to be old and wrinkle like me. Ha! —Daddy
CHINA WAS his last chance, and Charles Wang was a man who used all of his chances.
How had all these peasants transformed themselves? And why hadn’t his family stayed and done the same?
He waved off the concern and headed away from this globalized bustle. Charles Wang didn’t need a man-child in girlish pants telling him what he should do!
He’d never liked the platinum trend in America—what was the point of an expensive material that looked exactly like a cheap one?
Every immigrant is the person he might have been and the person he is, and his homeland is at once the place it would have been to him from the inside and the place it must be to him from the outside.
“‘I am rooted, but I flow.’ It’s Virginia Woolf.”
“And then she wouldn’t let you see your kid? That’s crazy.” “I know! She’s crazy.” “I hate it when people say their ex-girlfriends are crazy. It’s so fucking misogynistic.” “Saina, life is messy, okay? It’s not . . . things don’t just fall into place for everyone.”
Unexpectedly, Barbra had laughed. “Who knows where we end up in a life? Could be anywhere. Even some farmhouse. Some Asian lady.”
You do things for yourself and I do things for myself. We’re selfish bastards Saina and now I know it’s better that way for people like us. Because we burn up the world together. You can’t deny it. I
Andrew. A white woman, no matter how alluring, could never be equal to the Wangs.
Communist worse than Japanese. Communist fight their own people, kill their own people, they hate xue wen, hate knowledge, culture.
“I think intent matters with lies, and
“No, no, I already did the same thing. I came to America when Saina’s mother died. I heard about it, and I knew I wanted to marry Charles, so I came. If I don’t come, I don’t have my life.” He looked lost. “I don’t know, this really isn’t the same thing, is it? She was . . . she was so done with me.”
If this boy couldn’t recognize that you had to grab at life, there was nothing she could do about it. “Okay.” She shrugged. “Then you stay here. But I think at least you should try.”
The people of the world could be divided into two groups: those who used all of their chances, and those who stood still through opportunity after opportunity, waiting for a moment that would never be perfect.
I just wear a Che Guevara T-shirt. It doesn’t mean that I know anything about actual Communists.”
You know that love too much is okay. That is the best thing in life. Love too much.”
There were other things that he knew. The Indians were just a tribe of early Chinese people who took a long walk across the Bering Land Bridge and ended up in a New World. The true Americans were Chinese! It was too bad it had taken him so long to remember that.
Earthquakes. Floods. Infidelity. Betrayal. Failure. The fields burn and the next harvest is assured. The world destroys itself and we rebuild it. The destroying is as important as the rebuilding. There can be as much joy in the destruction as the rebirth.
he remembered, still, that words were important to alive people.
And then, in the late summer of 2008, I went to a ridiculously over-the-top party for Trump Tower Dubai. From the beginning it was clear that this party was going to be offensively ostentatious—the invitations themselves were some kind of plaque encased in heavy slabs of overweight plastic. It was held at a mansion in Bel-Air, Christina Aguilera performed, Cirque du Soleil performers stalked around on stilts, Wolfgang Puck himself was making and presenting food, and a good portion of that food was covered with 24-karat gold flakes.
And even if that didn’t really exist, this was real: the party favors were iPod Touches for every guest, engraved with the Trump Tower Dubai logo.
