Lisa See

The most important character to learn is dian. Who can tell me what it means?”
“Lightning!” The students sing out in perfect chorus.
“We can also call that electricity,” he says.
“Electricity,” we repeat as one, echoing his pronunciation as closely as possible.
“If I add the character—”
“Speak,” we practically shout as he writes the character next to dian.
“I get—”
“Telephone!”
“If I add the characters for vision and sowing seeds to dian, I get—”
“Television!”
“And if I write shadow next to dian, I get—”

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Do-saeng’s husband had given her one son and one daughter, and that was the end.

One day I too would have a loud voice.

Mother had offered to pay Jun-bu to write messages for Yu-ri on long paper ribbons. He did it for free.

How different it is with friendship. No one picks a friend for us; we come together by choice. We are not tied together through ceremony or the responsibility to create a son; we tie ourselves together through moments.

Many Jeju men were lost to rough tides, high waves, and strong winds. Long ago, Jeju’s men had been divers, but the Korean monarchs imposed such a high tax on their work that it was eventually given to women, who were taxed at a lower rate.

Top-level haenyeo led us, but it was the presence of grandmothers, who remembered the time before the Japanese arrived, and girls like Mi-ja and me, who’d lived our entire lives under Japanese rule, that reminded everyone of our purpose.

When she was done, she came to my house, where Mother allowed her to help me sort through our old thatch to search for insect larva, which Mother boiled for us to eat.

She held my hand when my father announced the official beginning of our family’s mourning by taking the last tunic my mother had worn to the roof, waving it above his head, and shouting three times into the wind, “My wife, Kim Sun-sil, of the Gul-dong section of Hado Village, has died at age thirty-eight. I inform you of her return to the place she came from.”