My Mother's Books: An Exploration of Heritage through Reading

Abstract

Sometimes it is difficult to love my mother. But I can pick up a book, crack open its stiff spine, smell the pulp in its pages, and loving my mother becomes seamless. My mother grew up in Singapore eating chicken rice after school, picking fruit off trees that drooped onto the sidewalk, and reading English pulp fiction. There were other books too, of course, as long as they allowed her imagination to roam freely.