Reading Impressions: The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

 There’s a concept called practical magic or everyday magic. This is not magic for changing the tides or creating universes or summoning gods or demons. This is magic that one uses to get by in this simple, earthly life. Simple things that make the time between sunrise and sunset easier. Ordinary things that keep the sleep time safe and restful. A parent’s love is like that. When you don’t understand it. When you finally do understand it, the love then moves into the immense magic of changing tides, creating universes, and summoning gods or demons.

This is the story of Jack, who finally understood his mother's love after she was dead.

Jack’s father was American (from Connecticut) and his mother was a Chinese peasant. Her father had picked her out of a catalog (because that used to be a thing at one time). In the picture, she was wearing a Cheongsam (a tight-fitted Chinese dress with a Mandarin collar) and her hair draped on her shoulders. They met eventually. He found out that some things that were advertised about her weren’t true. But he’d fallen in love with her smile.

She had grown up in a village called Sigulu where people knew how to make magical zhezhi (origami or paper folding). So she would use this trick to make paper tigers and other animals out of wrapping paper, breathe life into them, and have them play around to entertain her son. Her son, who grows up with his American friends, slowly starts feeling ashamed of his mother and distances himself from her. She passes away, leaving behind this paper menagerie and letters to her son where she writes about her life in China before marriage. It has stories of famine, revolution, the murders of her family, her escape to Hong Kong, etc. The boy reads this and tries to reconcile himself to the memory of the simple, frail woman who would cook him duck and rice in the kitchen and make him laugh with paper animals who came to life. Her only request to him before she passed on was to bring out the letters during Qingming (the Festival of the Dead) and read them every year. (Only later when Jack is having someone translate this for him does he realize that his mother just wanted him to see her as a person who tried.)

This short story is the equivalent of a snowflake – a tender, everyday occurrence for some, and unique. I just finished reading this story and I already know that this ache in my heart will now never leave me. (This reminds me of what I'd felt when I’d read ‘The Namesake’.) There’s a part in the story where the boy is so ashamed of his mother because she can’t speak English. Her husband tries to explain to her to at least try improving her English. And this is what the writer writes: “Mom looked at him. “If I say ‘love,’ I feel here.” She pointed to her lips. “If I say ‘ai,’ I feel here.” She put her hand over her heart.”

The story weaves in magic realism and the quiet quotidian heroism of a parent beautifully – seamless, tucked in meticulously with artistry and observation, no cuts or add-ins – just clever creases and moulding into shape – much like origami.