Welcome to Litsy!

My father looked down at himself and grinned. The look of sheer delight on his face was something I had never seen before, and I knew that I wasn‘t just seeing my father in a costume. I was seeing the man he would have become if only his life had gone differently. It was my graduation gown, but it fit him too” page 338

Sacrifice of a Father “Sitting in the stands because he couldn‘t play the game himself, cheering me on while no one cheered for him, then heading back to work after everyone else went home” page 338

Before I met Leisle, I was complacent but happy, and now, thanks to get, I was ambitious but miserable-not exactly my idea is a good trade. I found Leisle‘s ambition infectious, but I was already suffering from a long-term disease of my own: the fear of failure. The higher the ladder, the greater the fall. Page 311

“But I was so ignorant about girls that I was blind to my own form of prejudice. I felt like a biologist who had just discovered a new species; I probably told her that and impressed her again” page 303

What really made mathematics attractive to me was it appealed to my desire for justice. Math had clearly stated rules. I‘d you kept the rules, you were rewarded, and if you broke the rules, you were penalized. There were right answers and wrong answers, and they had nothing to do with the color of your skin or where you happened to be born. To me, math was an island of justice in an unjust world, and it gave me a way to finally stand out. Page 266

“Mathematics is a language of its own. A number is a noun and an equal sign is a verb, and it you know what those terms mean, you speak the language. The language of mathematics is a foreign language to everyone at first.” Page 266

“There is nothing in Asian DNA that produces accelerated mathematical ability, but there is something in the refugee experience that draws us to mathematics: our frustration with the English language” page 266

In America, to make money is difficult, but to starve us even more difficult” page 217

After all the wonders we had already witness, we just took for granted that a 190-ton chungo of metal fouls hurtle across the sky at five hundred miles per hour carrying us in its belly. Why not? If the pilot had told us we were going to make a quick stop on the moon, we probably would have believed him” page 216

“When you eat the fruit, remember who planted the tree” page 206

2/2 “...He returned from the dead to offer love and forgiveness to everyone who would accept it. it was the great love that brought Seasweep here, Stan told everyone. His great loved completed His followers to love and care for others. He loved, so we love; He gave, so we give back.“ Page 203

1/2 “To my father's surprised, Stan didn't talk about his noble organization or the selfless crew of Seasweep or even the details behind the rescue. Instead, he talked about Jesus: His love for the unloved, His compassion for the helpless, and His heart for all those whom society sweeps into the gutter. He healed the lame and blind He wept over the dead, and wrapped His arms around the untouchable. His greatest act of love was to die for us...“

In the since days since we left Malaysia, we had eaten nothing at all. It was the best meal any of us had ever eaten, and no future meal would ever be able to compare with it because that meal went past our stomachs and directly into our souls. Page 200

...even our blessings turned out to be curses; even the answers to our prayers were denials. Nothing made sense. We felt hopeless, helpless, abandoned by God and man-and my father was certain that this was the day we would all die. -pg 192

Yesterday‘s rain had brought a brief respite from heat and thirst, but it was almost worse than nothing at all. It seemed like a cosmic tease-not enough to save us, just enough to prolong our agony. My father had prayed for rain, and his prayer had been miraculously answered-but the storm that immediately followed almost sank our boat. Even our blessings turned out to be curses; even the answers to our prayers were denials. Nothing made sense...

My Grandmother admitted later, “We prayed to Buddha; we prayed to our ancestors; we prayed to Jesus. We prayed to anyone who would listen.” Apparently Someone did. -pg189

It was not the first time my father had ever prayed, but there was something very different about this prayer. There were no memorized words, no ritualistic postures, no petitions for help from enlightened beings or benevolent ancestors. It was an elemental prayer, stripped of all pretext and formality, just a creation speaking to its Creator.-pg 187

Refugees were not human beings; when they left their home, no list was made of who they were, when they left, or where they were headed. No nation mourned their departure, and no country awaited their arrival. There was death at sea but no death toll; there was heartbreak but no history. Refugees were unwanted, unclaimed, and unnamed-invisible people. They were just some country‘s former problem-out of sight, out of mind-pg184

The receipts they gave us were worthless pieces of paper. They were just like the worthless receipts the Nazis gave the Jews when they stripped them of their possessions before packing them into boxcars like cattle. The Nazis understood that bureaucracy has a calming effect when people feel out of control. -pg 175

The Malaysian government apparently decided that drowning was much quieter, and the sea offered the added bonus of not only killing the refugees but burying them too...No engines, no sails-not even an oar. These were not boats; they were floating coffins.-pg 168

How [can] fatigue descend into assault, abduction, and brutal murder? That was the fate of many women who sailed into the South China Sea, and the violence didn‘t end when their boats reached shore. Women were particular objects of violence during that period, just as they had been throughout history. Man‘s inhumanity to man can be appalling, but nothing compared to man‘s inhumanity to woman-pg162

Five years ago he was a prince, and now he owned a tarp. The wind had stripped him of everything he owned, everything he had ever wanted—but as he looked down at his dying wife and his frightened children huddled around her, he began to realize that the only things he had left in the world were the only things that had ever mattered -pg146

We are accustomed to emotionalism. But hunger is emotional, death is emotional, and poverty is emotional. Those who wish to make it all seem neat, clinical, and bureaucratic are the ones falsifying the picture, not us -pg93

My grandmother liked to be needed, and she knew that of all the ties that bind, purse strings do it best -pg79

“But as she ran toward the bridge [to commit suicide], baby Bruce began to cry in the house behind her, and when she heard his cry, she stopped. She knew she couldn‘t abandon him even if it meant she would have to go on living. She turned, walked slowly back to the house, set Jenny down, and picked up a broom” pg57

This was such an interesting story of a refugee family from Vietnam. There were perspectives that I had never thought of before. A great book if want to learn more about the experiences of refugees.

I got a little too excited and ordered 6 books off of the Audible $5.95 book sale. I ordered the the four in the picture, the tagged book, and The Golem and the Jinni. I couldn't help it! My library doesn't have most of these audiobooks. I NEEDED them 😉😂

Sometimes I need to read non-fiction because true stories can be so remarkable. This story is amazing—although it drags a bit at the end IMHO. Still, I learned a lot about Vietnam and how hard things were for refugees. Part of why I love reading is that it helps me feel compassion and what better way than living in a refugee‘s shoes for a while?