Summary

In the prologue, the narrator suggests that she was born with a talent for school. Though she struggled in the United States after she and her mother moved there from China, her talent for school helped elevate their situation. She also mentions a decision that she made when everything in her life was going well, a "decision that changed the trajectory of the rest of my life" (1). Outside a bridal shop, she thinks of her own childhood, one that is spent sewing, embroidering, and beading -- work, instead of play. She thinks of the only photograph she has of herself as a young child, one she ripped up and put into an envelope. She'd put the pieces of the picture back together again and notices the "hope and ambition" there in her eyes even then.

In Chapter 1, Aunt Paula takes Kim and...