Maybe it's not a great sci-fi story, but it a tearingly beautiful story because of the way it deftly handles the subject of the cultural divide within a household. Maybe it's because I'm Chinese, can understand the Chinese hanyu pinyin in the story, and also have the same experience as the protagonist of having…

Bitch please, this isn't a didactic story for young children nor is it a sentimental morality tale. You've been reading the Canon of Western Literature for too long so you don't have a context to understand that this story plays out every day. It's very much unresolved. Hugging your mom doesn't surmount the…

I was bussing home from school, and halfway through the story I started crying. The hardships an Asian parent goes through in a culturally different world just hits too close to home. I remember asking my mom why I couldn't have sandwich lunches like all the other kids, not realizing that her carefully packed fried…

I think it may have been manipulative for sure, but I don't think it was too melodramatic. I thought considering everything that happened the "drama" was understated. And I disagree that the mother was flawless and saintly, if anything she was sadly ignorant. She didn't know how to connect to her son and she didn't…

Damn it, should have put in a warning about this story. Not the best thing to read at work. Not the best thing to try to finish reading at work. Not the best thing to try and muster up the wherewithal to finish it on the subway from work. Thank god I already had a stack of tissues around because of my cold.