from Lee, Chang-Rae (1995, Riverhead Books)
Native Speaker, page 6.
...My father, a Confucian of high order... For him, all of life was a rigid matter of family. I know all about that fine and terrible ordering, how it variously casts you as the golden child, the slave-son or daughter, the venerable father, the long-dead god. But I know, too, of the basic comfort in this familial precision, where the relation abides no argument, no questions or quarrels. The truth, finally, is who can tell it.
page 137... it was clearly Kwang's Confucian training at work, his secular religion of pure hierarchy, his belief that everyone is at once a noble and a servant and then just a man. Its adherents know no hubris. Instead this: you simply bow down before those who would honor you. You honor them back. For you are but ash to their fire. All spent of light.
page 277... [folksong] it's the same register my mother used to hum while doing the housework, a languourous baritone, the most Korean range, low enough for our gut of sadness, high for the wonder of chance, good luck.
page 278... I say to him, "Korean stories always work like that. Everbody dies but one. And the one has little to live for."
"But somehow he lives," John says. "The one goes one. We're too stubbborn."
"I think we're too brave and too blind," I answer... "I read that Korean nationals are the most rescued people from the world's mountaintops."
