I cried

      I cried when I read this in my Ethnic American Literature class tonight.  The rawness and simplicity of the words struck me.  The protagonist of the novel, Native Speaker, a simple man named Henry Park struggled with the trauma of his seven year-old son accidentally suffocating.  

"I've read the dying feel no pain but sense everything that goes on around them.  They view the scene from a brief distance above and no matter who they are how old, they gain a wisdom from that last vista.  But we are the living, remaining on the ground, and what we know is the narrow and the broken.  Here, we are strewn about in the lengthy expanse of an archipelago, too far to call one another, too far to see... 

Now, keep thinking.  Think for keeps.  Then, isolate the wonderments, the curiosities of his death; they will help you to see.  Shed sentimentality.  Stop this falling in love with fate.  Reside, if you can, in the last place of the dead.

Maybe in this way:

A crush.  You pale little boys are crushing him, your adoring mob of hands and feet, your necks and heads, your nostrils and knees, your still-sweet sweat and teeth and grunts.  Too thick anyway, to breathe.  How pale his face, his chest.  Blanket his eyes.  Listen, now.  You can hear the attempt of his breath, that unlost voice, calling us from the bottom of the world".

- Chang-rae Lee