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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“I can’t stand the taste of it,” she said. “Tastes like war.”
had heard of the “Yankees” and how they were here to save us…. We were all hoping for rice or barley, and we drooled at the thought of so much food … but it was an endless supply of powdered milk that caused all who drank it to suffer for days with diarrhea.2
But the United States would continue to kill Koreans in order to save them from themselves.
“Dap-dap-eu-rah”—I’m suffocating—an expression of stifling sadness.
South Korea’s first president, Syngman Rhee, whose motto was “one race, one nation,” publicly denounced the presence of “Yankee wives and mixed race children” as a “social crisis.”
Children born to Korean mothers and foreign fathers would not be allowed to attend public schools or register as South Korean citizens. Long before I was born, Rhee’s policies had already determined the conditions of our exile.
After Trump took office and amplified the voices of white supremacy, the billboard made another one of its highly controversial, news-breaking statements: Freedom Is Dangerous! Slavery Is Peaceful! In Chehalis, we were never meant to survive.
Again and again, I’d return to the words of Adul de Leon, a sex worker activist from the Philippines: “[American feminists] spend all their time arguing about whether or not prostitution can be a free choice. We women from Third World countries got really bored with their fighting. Our issues around prostitution are different.”1 Having the “right to choose not to be a prostitute” was more urgent.2
“One time, no love,”
In other words: If I only give you one serving, I am not giving you enough love. It is her mealtime mantra, her way of foreclosing anyone’s protest about the double portion. The unspoken rule is that we reciprocate by eating.
