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He was hungry, and his parents had said not to make a fuss. He was lucky to be in America. He must do well in school, they’d said, obey Uncle…    read more

Grandma did not speak to my mother for the first ten or so years of my parents’ marriage. My parents were early adopters of what other people might label color-blindness…    read more

Starting out, my mother is excited to be driving. She sings along with the radio. The sunlight is yellow and bright on her left arm.  She wears sunglasses and looks…    read more

Zhang Xiaobing would not have called himself a bad person, should anyone have been given the opportunity to pose such a question to the prisoner. In fact, if you asked anyone other than the court-appointed defense attorney whose main function in the trial was to enter Zhang’s guilty plea, the prosecutor and the panel of three judges, who had found him guilty and sentenced him to death, very few people who knew Zhang would have said he was a bad person—wicked, evil, corrupt, a low-born thing, a turtle’s egg, a nonhuman devil whose crimes would merit the ultimate punishment.

The silver and black Lakenvelder was the best. A rooster shiny like marble, a purple ribbon winner if I ever saw one. Big. He could kick a hole in my jeans with his fifth toe, sharp like a diamond.