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I love the details in the novel. Here it's the cooking of rice and giblets (no artichokes; not in season), lamb, onion, garlic, then as it all cooks she brushes her hair and you can smell the food cooking mixed with her black hair. It's very beautiful.

I like the play on language here with the word 'Me', which in (northern) Vietnam is a formal way of referring to a mother, but in English refers to one's own self. So she's both "Me (her mom)" and "me (herself, a mother)".

She's now experiencing the same desire to keep her kids safe and alive that her parents went through. And though what her parents endured was far more dramatic, the drive to protect one's kids comes from the same place.

Well if my neighbor's O2 tank exploded and stated an apartment fire I would probably not be so aware as to gather all my stuff the way they did - so in a way that refugee reflex is a pretty good and practical skill, even if it's genesis comes from a place of fear.

It's like the family couldn't wait to put the past behind them so much that they got rid of nearly everything that reminded them of the past.

I like how she describes what the intended lessons were (do well in school, be nice to others), as well as the unintended lesson (always worrying about safety).

She describes it as her parents building their bubble around them - a place separate and safe but also the words denotes an isolation too.

Interesting how they are used to the government taking care of everything but when they get to America they have to take care of themselves. I can see how that would be a culture shock, but my goodness we Americans take the self-reliance thing way too far to the point where it just isolates everyone.

Poor Bo, he gets left behind and then when he does get to leave it's a disaster trying to get to America. I wonder how much it is his bad luck, or just lack of planning since Ma seems to be the one who has her head screwed on tighter?

I love that he thinks Chicago is ugly.

Different times in the late 70's when it was relatively easy to get into the US and stat a new life. Sad how in my lifetime the US has slowly been closing itself off more and more from the rest of the world.

The refugee camp where people remake their lives. I suppose on one hand that terrible experience because you have no home and no real identity, but also an exciting possibility since you can forge a new one, at least a new professional identity, even if you can't really change who you are; what you do can change.

Good 'ol Ma, when she's in the hospital everyone just sits around eating rice and butter, then when she gets out, even with no shoes, she gets a better tent, food, supplies, and everyone's paperwork put in order.

And I was wondering if we'd ever get a real photograph, and she has one here of her family right after they escaped in '78.

Imagine being a pastor of a church and you attempt to do the right thing, but because it goes against the economic interests of your congregation they kick you out so they can go on ... sinning. Times never do change, do they. People hear what they want and will make sure even God gives them the permission they want to not have to change.

"Good intentions prove nothing," true; "Faith proves nothing," and I disagree with this because faith proves faith, Faith is its own proof. And not just in something religious, but even of oneself - faith in oneself proves faith in oneself, to be daring, to be rebellious, to listen and have faith.

Never have a found a book so profoundly brilliant and infuriating at the same damn time.

Again these statements she makes are odd: "War is the father of us all" seems far to general and sweeping and, honestly, a little insipid. What does this even mean? I mean, what does it really mean ... is she saying that strife and murder conjoin with nurture to produce? what, exactly? I see war as something that happens to us, not as something that gives us half of our DNA.

Odd how Keates wrote about reading King Lear, an old man at the end of his life when Keates is eternally young. Is it the same as when I, nearing 50, read Keats to prime the pump of his youthful well hoping to find youth there, just as he thought about nature and age and wandering through the barren landscape of ... what, exactly? Was he mapping the topography of aging? of time?

"To be rebellious and to distrust rebellion is the plight of the tragic artist. Daring is dangerous." True. I wonder how much ED thought she was being daring? Maybe in the sense that she wrote what was in her heart and mind - because to reveal oneself is an act of daring - but did she think of herself as rebellious? I imagine her as someone who questions - is asking questions a form of daring rebellion? Probably.

Did Shakespeare have a "volcanic loathing for women?" He was equally able to peel back anyone's skin to find their soul - I'd argue he didn't much care for anyone, man or woman, which made him able to see them for all their good and evil. You sort of have to hate humanity to find a way to actually love it and know why you love it and express why you love it. If you always love, you never question it.

For in truth art lies hidden with nature, he who can wrest it from her, has it," Albrecht Durur.

OK, now THIS I can totally get behind in that she's naming the gun (is the gun) in the way of myth where swords had names, "Beowulf had Naegling, Sigmund owned Gram, Roland - Durandel, Hauteclere belonged to Oliver, and the Lady of the Lake lent Excalibur to Arthur". But here she is not only gun / sword, but giver and wielder. She's all three and thus encompasses myth.

"And what is genius but finer love?" - Emerson

"In myth at any time, a woman may suddenly change form. Ariadne became a spider, Alcyone, a bird, Niobe, a stone", thus like ED who, in poetry, also shape-shifts.

"A poem is an invocation, rebellious return to the blessedness of beginning again, wandering free in pure process of forgetting and finding."

A frontier, a new beginning, but what comes after the beginning of even a poem? Is a poem always a beginning? What happens after a poem?

Minor quibble: it annoys me when people pass off their own failings as being something they are not in control of. When ED loses her temper and blames it on Gunn (her grandmother) it's funny, yes, but childish too because all of us are n control of ourselves - nobody else is pulling the strings.

I like the comparison to Daniel Boone in that they are both hunters forging a new frontier.

I feel like I've lost some of the thread here. She's pulling for a lot of sources and quoting them at length, but if she wants us to see what she sees she needs to maybe be a bit more clear? Trying to write the way ED thinks is bold, but I'm sot sure she's pulling it off well here. Fascinating nevertheless, and I'll be the first to admit I'm probably not smart enough for this book.

I feel she's getting a little too lost in the weeds of Shakespeare here.

"Time's dominion embraces each poem".

Not that I am for how women were treated during ED's time, but to say women were "psychologically mutilated" is going too far. All people are forced to work within a system they have no control over so to suggest that a male dominated society only has a negative influence on women suggests that there in no effect on men, which isn't true either. We're all in this together; troubling to see these divisions.

Is she making reference to Indo European myth where the world had once been female?

"At the blind point between what is said and meant, who is sounding herself?"

Interesting playing with 'sovereign' in regard to Elizabeth Tudor as being so many things to the poets of her time, from pagan to the sublime, not to mention a representative of God.