Pachinko

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit answered to, in strongest conjuration.

—Charles Dickens

The peasants knew that a spoiled son did more harm to a family than a dead one, and they kept themselves from indulging him too much

It was as if a warm room had gotten cooler, but it was still the same room.

Some Koreans in Japan do not wish to be called Zainichi Korean because the term means literally “foreign resident staying

She felt angry with him for lying, but she felt grateful, too. She had loved him, and she could not bear the thought of him being gone from this life.

I am interested in the physicality of women who live their daily struggles with integrity; their beauty captivates those who know them.

Needless to say, it is a perpetual loop of economic gender cruelty to require women to pay for their physical upkeep and then to punish them financially for not keeping up when they don’t have the funds.

Conventional physical beauty takes time, money, and effort, and it is expensive for all women, but it is cruelly so for women without resources.

However, what we also witness each day is how many ordinary people resist the indignities of life and history with grace and conviction by taking care of their families, friends, neighbors, and communities while striving for their individual goals. We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.

In Western literature, omniscient narration was the popular style in the nineteenth century, and it is my favorite point of view for community narratives.