"The Year She Left Us" by Kathryn Ma
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3 ChaPTer 1 Ari L ucky girl. That’s what I was told rom the rst moment I can remember. Another stranger, smelling unlike my mother, would swoop in low with a scary- wide s mile t o rufe m y hair or pinch my cheek. I would shrink and scamper, hide my ace in my mother’s knees, hear them laughing at my baby shyness. Later, I stared, black-eyed and baleul. I hated to be reminded. Hello, Ariadne. What a lucky little girl. Now you have a amily. I’m the one who’s lucky, my mother would always chirp. She knew my ell looks, was a raid o my eruptions, my locked ace and the storms that ollowed. When let alone, I would say please and thank you. When p rompted t o be grateul, I w ent gleeully m ute . I had other labels, too. A miracle, a blessing. An ironic twist to a long amily saga. That one made me laugh, since I wished I had said it mysel. A colossal mistake. That’s what Gran called me until the mistake had arrived and couldn’t be gotten rid o. Some people bundle d me with all the others, o r there are thousands o girls l ike me, like us, who were carried away to the richer nations and raised into amilies gobsmacked with love, swollen with good intentions. The Lost Daughters o China. The Unwanted, the Inconvenient, the Unhappy Outcome o t he One Chi ld Policy . Rescued is how my mother, Charlie, sometimes put it. I have a better word. Salvaged . She’s hardly worth noticing, that lucky little girl. Most people think they already know her, since she can be ound all over
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An excerpt from Kathryn Ma's latest novel "The Year She Left Us."
Transcript of "The Year She Left Us" by Kathryn Ma
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5/24/2018 "The Year She Left Us" by Kathryn Ma
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5/24/2018 "The Year She Left Us" by Kathryn Ma
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America, growing up in
most ordinary places to the mall, strolled by her
at the playground and in
h l i h h i
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5/24/2018 "The Year She Left Us" by Kathryn Ma
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T
the traveler who swaps a
a warm place by the firefor you the crucial ques
of luck?
