Summary

Part Three is entitled “Asylum,” and is subtitled “on stories and the alchemy of truth” (179). The author begins Chapter 1 with past-tense narration of her arrival in Oklahoma in 1989, the day before the Fourth of July. When they attended the parade, she says, she could not help feeling like the parade was a welcome for them. Upon their arrival, she says, she, Maman, and Daniel stayed with a conservative Christian couple named Jim and Jean who were, the author says, controlling about how the family began its adjustments to American life and repeatedly expressed the belief, along with many others, that the family should be grateful for what they had achieved.

The author then moves quickly through several years of her early life in America. She learned English quickly, but was bullied at school. Maman worked at a factory job far below her...