'The Paper Menagerie' is a heartbreaking story of family and immigration, told in just a few pages

You don’t always need hundreds of pages to tell a moving story. Or at least that’s the case with “The Paper Menagerie,” the titular story of Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.

“Paper Menagerie” is a short story about a bi-racial boy named Jack, who has a white dad and a Chinese mom, who immigrated to America. When he is a kid, Jack’s mom creates an origami menagerie for him, and when Jack’s mom breathes into the origami, the menagerie comes to life, jumping and playing with him. 

After a fight with schoolmate who teases Jack about his Chinese heritage, Jack discards the menagerie, and rejects his mom, who grows increasingly silent. As Jack grows up, he distances himself from his mom until their relationship is uncomfortable and strained. But when his mom dies, Jack discovers that she has been writing letters in the paper of his menagerie, and she has her own story that she has been struggling to tell. Read more…

More about Books, Mashreads, Mashreads Podcast, Culture, and Books
Source: Mashable | 'The Paper Menagerie' is a heartbreaking story of family and immigration, told in just a few pages