Summary

In “Peking Duck,” during the narrator’s “first years in the US,” she spends her time at the library (169). This is how she learns English and discovers Iron Silk, “a memoir by Mark Salzman (169). In the book, Salzman describes his happiest moment as his wife’s memory of eating Peking duck.

The narrator comes to the States when she is seven, two years after her parents immigrated. Her grandmother has been raising her. She barely recognizes her mother. When she first sees Utah, she experiences sensations “that exist . . . only in English” (171). Over the following years, her mother helps her learn English. She spends her days with her mother while she nannies “a toddler named Brandon” (172). One day, “a salesman comes to the door,” and forces himself inside despite her mother’s disinterest in his product (173). Though she taught the narrator English...