![]() My parents, especially my father, might be an anecdote: not all that come here make the best of it. Stephanos’s reflections also dispel the myth of the ambitious immigrant. ![]() To compensate, my mother would spend her efforts on the purchasing of things, some of which have been beautiful, while my father lived with as little effort as possible it was because, I think, China was still drawing his energy backwards, which left him little to move forward with in the States, where I’m certain he still feels like a foreigner despite his citizenship. He brought home his oil scars and anger and took it out on our family. And, I could tell that my father, though I know nothing of his childhood, had resigned himself to being just a cook in several Chinese restaurants. He starts with the title, being an excerpt from Dante’s Inferno and does not finish until the last sentence of the book. Mengestu wastes no time diving into the struggles of an American immigrant. ![]() She has told me stories of herself as a child going weeks in Vietnam without eating anything but balls of sticky rice and soy sauce. The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu is a novel that addresses America in a way that is real and raw. She has admitted that the reason she buys so much stuff, and why she stocks up on so much food, is because she came from without. ![]()
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