...that in spite of living in a mansion an American is not above wearing a pair of second-hand pants, bought for fifty cents.
Because in the end to learn a language, to feel connected to it, you have to have a dialogue, however childlike, however imperfect.
Everything in Bela's life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.
For years, I sort of would try to write a story that somehow fit the title. And I don't think it happened for maybe another four years that I actually thought of a story, the plot of a story that corresponded to that phrase.
If you grow up in a place, and you're small, even if the place is itself also small, it's huge to you. It's what's out there: it's the world outside of your door.
It took me a long time to even dare to envision myself as a writer. I was very uncertain and hesitant and afraid to pursue a creative life.
It was only then, raising my water glass in his name, that I knew what it meant to miss someone who was so many miles and hours away, just as he had missed his wife and daughters for so many months.
Language and identity are so fundamentally intertwined. You peel back all the layers in terms of what we wear and what we eat and all the things that mark us, and in the end, what we have are our words.
Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity of from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.
She had listened to him, partly sympathetic, partly horrified. For it was one thing for her to reject her background, to be critical of her family's heritage, another to hear it from him.
She has given birth to vagabonds. She is the keeper of all these names and numbers now, numbers she once knew by heart, numbers and addresses her children no longer remember.
She is stunned that in this town there are no sidewalks to speak of, no streetlights, no public transportation, no stores for miles at a time.
Somehow, bad news, however ridden with static, however filled with echoes, always manages to be conveyed.
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