# data[].attributes.body
"But the happiness was cut short... I can't escort you any further."" (p. 199)

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One night, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I said to my mother, “I don’t even have the energy to study. Let’s sell one of the rings.”

“We can’t. They’re Aunt Tam’s,” my mother said, irritated.

I tried to keep calm. “She gave them to me. I need to survive and study before I can wear any ring.”

“No,” she snapped.

“Mother, I’m hungry,” I pleaded, biting back my tears. She went white and glowered at me. Suddenly, she jumped up, screaming like a madwoman, “No! Shut up! I said NO.”

# data[].attributes.body
something inside me earned to console her, and something else, even stronger, held me back

p 181

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"One night, when I couldn't stand it anymore... I waited for her to calm down and tiptoed back into the house to sleep." (p. 180)

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“She followed me… immaculate white background” p.g 139

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My mother was stunned and embarrassed. “l can’t accept all this. I’ve got enough to celebrate Tet already. This is too much. How could we eat it all?”

Aunt Tam replied coldly, “I’m not giving this food to you. This is my offering to my brother’s memory. It’s all for Hang. She can offer the food to her teachers, her friends, anyone she likes.”

Chapter 6

# data[].attributes.body
"Hail autumn and its procession of dead leaves, The rows of barren poplars stand silent on the hillside." (p. 111)

"He's all the family I have left." (p. 111)

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How could my mother accept this humiliation? Why... the joy and the bustle of those festival days. (pg. 127)

He was an Englishman who seemed to carry the fog of his... the more it seamed to invade his art. (pg. 129)

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every day, at the crack of dawn, street vendors swarmed around the housesat hawk their homemade snacks: sticky rice, fried dumplings, steamed rice cakes, spring rolls, snail and crab soups, and other delicacies. Their charcoal and husk fires crackled and sputtered and the aroma of onions, crispy dumplings, and red chilies fried in oil filled the air, and the fragrances overpowering the stench of the garbage, the open sewers, the walls reeking of rancid urine.

# data[].attributes.body
"I pulled my hand back and stuffed it in my pocket. I felt chilled, numb. I didn't know why, but there was something sinister about all the finery, like throwing flower petals on an abandoned grave." (p.g 88)

# data[].attributes.body
"My mother was still young and beautiful... where I came into the world." (p. 67)

# data[].attributes.body
"Mother would bend over me, murmuring these things. She looked at me tenderly, with a sort of admiration in her gaze. It frightened me. The other women in our neighborhood never looked at their children this way. " (p. 42)

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Her pearl-white teeth glistened, but her beauty and her youth had already faded. From sorrow. For nothing. For no one. (p.55)

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"...this blind hatred that needed no basis, no justification." (p. 61)

# data[].attributes.subject
"...this blind hatred that needed no basis, no justification." (p. 61)

# data[].attributes.headline
"I felt chilled, numb. I didn't know why, but there was something sinister about all the finery, like throwing flower petals on an abandoned grave." (p. 88)

# data[].attributes.subject
"I felt chilled, numb. I didn't know why, but there was something sinister about all the finery, like throwing flower petals on an abandoned grave." (p. 88)

# data[].attributes.body
At dawn, birds began to warble in the bamboo grove; the garden hummed with their singing, and a fresh breeze swept away my fears. (p. 18)

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“To live with dignity, the important thing is never to despair. You give up once, and everything gives way. They say ginger root becomes stringy, but pungent with age. Unhappiness forges a woman, makes her selfless, compassionate.” (p. 14)

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""To live with dignity... makes her selfless, compassionate."" (p. 14)

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It was then that I understood why the voice had enchanted me. Like a call, it beckoned me to a kind of love - to revolt, the most essential force in human existence. (p. 39)

# data[].attributes.subject
It was then that I understood why the voice had enchanted me. Like a call, it beckoned me to a kind of love - to revolt, the most essential force in human existence. (p. 39)

# data[].attributes.headline
"If only my mother...a spark from this inferno" (p.g. 39)

# data[].attributes.subject
"If only my mother...a spark from this inferno" (p.g. 39)