Li-ling’s mother Quotes in Do Not Say We Have Nothing
[…] in poorer countries, people like Ma and me would not be so lonely. On television, poor countries were crowded places, overloaded elevators trying to rise to the sky. People slept six to a bed, a dozen to a room […] In fact, the way to punish someone might be to remove them from their circle of family and friends, isolate them in a cold country, and shatter them with loneliness.
Not knowing what else to do, Ma and I wandered through Chinatown, carrying a photograph of Ai-ming from restaurant to restaurant. One after another, people studied the picture and shook their heads […] A poem from the Book of Records lodged in my thought, Family members wander, scattered on the road, attached to shadows / Longing for home, five landscapes merge into a single city.
In school, they recited essays about what made a good revolutionary. She began to wonder what made a good father, a good grandmother, a good enemy, a good person.
In the morning, loudspeakers cried out the same turbulent song: “The Esteemed and Great Leader of our Party, our army and the People, Comrade Mao Zedong, leader of the international proletariat, has died…” Big Mother walked the shrouded streets. […] She thought of her sister and Wen, of her lost boys and Ba Lute, the unwritten music, the desperate lives, the bitter untruths they had told themselves and passed on to their children. How every day of Sparrow’s factor life was filled with humiliations. Party cadres withheld his rations, demanded self-criticisms, scorned the way he held his head, his pencil, his hands, his silence.
Li-ling’s mother Quotes in Do Not Say We Have Nothing
[…] in poorer countries, people like Ma and me would not be so lonely. On television, poor countries were crowded places, overloaded elevators trying to rise to the sky. People slept six to a bed, a dozen to a room […] In fact, the way to punish someone might be to remove them from their circle of family and friends, isolate them in a cold country, and shatter them with loneliness.
Not knowing what else to do, Ma and I wandered through Chinatown, carrying a photograph of Ai-ming from restaurant to restaurant. One after another, people studied the picture and shook their heads […] A poem from the Book of Records lodged in my thought, Family members wander, scattered on the road, attached to shadows / Longing for home, five landscapes merge into a single city.
In school, they recited essays about what made a good revolutionary. She began to wonder what made a good father, a good grandmother, a good enemy, a good person.
In the morning, loudspeakers cried out the same turbulent song: “The Esteemed and Great Leader of our Party, our army and the People, Comrade Mao Zedong, leader of the international proletariat, has died…” Big Mother walked the shrouded streets. […] She thought of her sister and Wen, of her lost boys and Ba Lute, the unwritten music, the desperate lives, the bitter untruths they had told themselves and passed on to their children. How every day of Sparrow’s factor life was filled with humiliations. Party cadres withheld his rations, demanded self-criticisms, scorned the way he held his head, his pencil, his hands, his silence.
