Quote by Viet Thanh Nguyen

“What I would give to have those usless things with me now, kneeling by my mother's tomb and resting my head against its rough surface. Not the tomb in the hamlet where she had died, but here, in Luzon, in the cemetery built by Harry just for authenticity's sake. When I had seen his field of stones, I had asked to have the biggest tomb for my own use. On the tombstone I had pasted a reproduction of my mother's black-and-white picture that I carried in my wallet, the only extant image of her besides the rapidly fading ones in my mind, which had taken on the quality of a poorly preserved silent movie, its frames cracked by hairline fractures. On the gray face of the tombstone I painted her name and her dates in red, the mathematics of her life absurdly short for anyone but a grade-schooler to whom thirty-four-years seemed an eternity. Tombstone and tomb were cast from adobe rather than carved from marble, but I took comfort in knowing no one would be able to tell on film. At least in this cinematic life she would have a resting place fit for a mandarin's wife, an ersatz but perhaps fitting grave for a woman who was never more than an extra to anyone but me.”

Quote by Viet Thanh Nguyen