So Won

“Every means and source of struggle. They peeled and sorted and bunched and sprayed and cleaned and stacked and shelved and swept; my father put them to anything for which they didn't have to speak. They both had college degrees and knew no one in the country and spoke little English. The men, whom I knew as Mr. Yoon and Mr. Kim, were both recent immigrants in their thirties with wives and young children. They worked twelve-hour days six days a week for $200 cash and meals and all the fruit and vegetables we couldn't or wouldn't sell; it was the typical arrangement. My father like all successful immigrants before him gently and not so gently exploited his own.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

“Sometimes they would group up and play a team of Hispanic men who were also picnicking with their families. Once, they even played some black men, though my father pointed out to us in the car home that they were African blacks. Somehow there were rarely white people in the park, never groups of their families, just young couples, if anything.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

“He didn't say anything and just helped me to my room...He gently patted my back and then left the house and drove off to one of his stores in the city.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker

“That perhaps the ways of his mother and his father had occupied whole regions of his heart. I know this.”
― Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker