Summary

Li opens with a discussion of the concepts of before and after, which are so prominently displayed in beauty magazines. Li likes the idea of a clear distinction between before and after, but does not believe it can truly exist since "what one carries from one point to another, geographically or temporally, is one's self" (4). She then remembers a friend who committed suicide and recounts her own decision not to attend her memorial. In recounting these events, Li refuses to let the present "judge the past" (5). The next scene takes place at a program which Li attended after the second of two hospital stays. Unwilling to share the pain she considers her private matter, she is told she is not making progress, but all she wants is to be invisible. Li is naturally...