Immersive Remix: "The Paper Menagerie" by Ken Liu

Summary

Podcast Summary: LeVar Burton Reads – Immersive Remix: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu

Host: LeVar Burton
Date: April 12, 2022
Story by: Ken Liu

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Episode Overview

In this heartfelt episode, LeVar Burton brings to life Ken Liu’s acclaimed short story, "The Paper Menagerie," in an immersive audio experience. The episode centers on themes of identity, family, cultural heritage, generational understanding, and the magic—both literal and metaphorical—that links a Chinese-American son with his immigrant mother. Through Burton’s narration and post-story reflection, listeners are guided on an emotional journey that explores the pain of assimilation, the complexity of memory, and the urge for connection—both realized and missed.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Introduction to “The Paper Menagerie”

• LeVar introduces the story as a deeply personal and magical narrative by Ken Liu, who is lauded for his versatility as an author, translator, lawyer, and coder.
• He emphasizes the story’s unique blend of realism and magic, noting that Liu does not shy away from the complexities of childhood and adulthood.

“There are elements of childlike wonder and imagination made real in ‘The Paper Menagerie,’ and I want you to think about how an ordinary object can take on a life. In this case, it’s an ordinary sheet of paper that is skillfully manipulated and takes on another form.” – LeVar Burton [00:49]

2. Story Summary and Themes

• Opening Memory: Jack, a Chinese-American child, is soothed by his mother through magic origami—crafted, animated animals made of wrapping paper, including a tiger named Lao Hu [01:10–04:00].
• Mother’s Magic: Mom breathes life into the creations (“She breathed into them so that they shared her breath and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.”) [02:10].
• Cultural Assimilation: As Jack grows up in Connecticut, pressure from peers and alienation increases. Encounters with neighborhood children expose prejudices and Jack’s internalized shame about his heritage [08:00–15:00].
  • Jack becomes embarrassed by his mother’s accent and culture, eventually rejecting her language and her magical creations, in the pursuit of assimilation.

“Other families don’t have moms who don’t belong.” – Jack [14:35]

• Painful Estrangement: Jack’s rejection intensifies, culminating in his cruelty toward his mother and the abandonment of the paper menagerie, symbolizing his rejection of his roots [16:30–18:00].

• Loss and Regret: As an adult, Jack’s mother succumbs to cancer. Before her death, she asks Jack to keep and occasionally open the box of paper animals, especially during Qingming, the festival for the dead [29:00–31:30].

  • Jack’s emotional detachment and inability to reconcile with his mother is palpable, even at her deathbed.

• Rediscovery and Revelation:

  • After her death, Jack finds the box and—on Qingming—unfolds the origami tiger, discovering a letter written in Chinese from his mother.
  • He seeks help translating the letter and is confronted with his mother’s untold story of hardship, survival, and the hope she had invested in her son—her living connection to her lost family and culture [35:00–51:00].
  • The letter is achingly intimate, recounting her journey from famine-stricken China, through servitude and abuse, to marriage in America via a catalog bride service. Her magic is revealed as a village tradition—practical and protective, yet filled with longing and love.

“The animals will stop moving when I stop breathing. But if I write to you with all my heart, I’ll leave a little of myself behind on this paper, in these words... When the spirits of the departed are allowed to visit their families, you’ll make the parts of myself I leave behind come alive too.” – Mom’s letter [38:15]

3. LeVar’s Reflections on the Story

• The Power of Magic Realism:
  • LeVar relates the story’s blend of magic and grief to his own belief in the unseen and magical elements of life.

“I genuinely believe in the magic that life can sometimes offer, that there is validity to that which we cannot see... that world is just as real as the tangible world.” – LeVar Burton [53:30]

• On Identity and Self-Acceptance
  • Burton shares his personal struggle with self-acceptance as a Black child in America, paralleling Jack’s rejection of his own reflection:

“I heavily identified with that boy who looked in the mirror and wanted so desperately not to see his mother’s face reflected. That was very real for me.” – LeVar Burton [54:25]

• On Relationships and Regret
  • LeVar highlights the fragility of love and relationships, comparing them to the paper animals whose life can be squeezed out but sometimes revived.

“Sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally, we squeeze the life out of them... and sometimes those relationships can be reanimated, they can be brought back to life and sometimes we miss that opportunity.” [54:58]

• Quotes Joni Mitchell’s song: “You don’t know what you got till it’s gone...” to illustrate the story’s lesson on valuing loved ones.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the Paper Magic:
  “Mom’s kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.” [02:12 – Narration]

• Assimilation and Shame:
  “If I say love, I feel here. She pointed to her lips. If I say I, I feel here. She put her hand over her heart.” – Jack’s Mom, struggling to express emotion despite language barriers [15:00]

• Devastating Regret:
  “You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It’s for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone.” – Mom’s letter [47:25]

• Final Act of Remembrance:
  “Following the creases, I refolded the paper back into Lao Hu. I cradled him in the crook of my arm, and as he purred, we began the walk home.” [51:45]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------------------------|----------------| | LeVar’s Introduction to Ken Liu and the story | 00:49–02:10 | | The Origami Magic and Jack’s Childhood | 01:10–07:30 | | Neighborhood Prejudice, Peer Pressure | 08:00–15:00 | | Jack’s Rejection of Mom and Culture | 14:30–19:00 | | Mom’s Illness and Death | 29:00–33:00 | | The Rediscovery of the Paper Menagerie | 35:00–36:30 | | Reading and Translation of Mom’s Letter | 37:40–51:30 | | LeVar’s Reflection and Personal Insights | 52:00–56:00 |

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Tone and Language

Faithfully preserving Ken Liu’s emotional nuance, the narration is gentle, somber, and deeply introspective—mirroring Jack’s journey through curiosity, shame, pain, regret, and ultimately, bittersweet connection with his mother and heritage.

LeVar Burton’s tone in the reflection segments is reverent, vulnerable, and empathetic—openly relating his own struggles to those in the story, creating a comforting space for listeners to process the narrative’s emotional depth.

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Summary Takeaway

LeVar Burton’s immersive reading of “The Paper Menagerie” is a powerful exploration of love, magic, identity, and generational healing. Ken Liu’s story, given voice by Burton, navigates the universal pain of loss and the precious, often-missed opportunities to embrace heritage and love while they are present in our lives.

This episode is a moving reminder that what we once rejected or considered ordinary—like a paper tiger, a mother’s broken English, or our own reflection—may hold the deepest strands of magic, memory, and meaning.

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“Are you as devastated as I am? Because that story kills me.” – LeVar Burton [53:15]

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For further reflections or to explore more from LeVar and Ken Liu, visit levarburtonpodcast.com and find the story in Ken Liu’s collection “The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories.”

Transcript

[LeVar Burton]

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[LeVar Burton]

I'm LeVar Burton and this is LeVar Burton Reads. It's where every episode I hand pick a different piece of short fiction and I read it to you. Thing that these stories have in common is that I love them and I hope you will too. Today's story, y' all is from the award winning science fiction and fantasy author Ken Liu and the story is called the Paper Menagerie. It's from his collection of short fiction, the Paper Menagerie and Other stories from Saga Press. The Paper Menagerie has won the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy Award. Ken Liu himself is a very multi talented person. He's not only an author, he translates a lot of other people's works from the Chinese into English. He's a lawyer, he programs, he's a coder. He writes all kinds of speculative fiction from hard sci fi to fantasy. But this story is pure magic. There are elements of childlike wonder and imagination made real in the Paper Menagerie and I want you to think about how an ordinary object can take on a life. In this case, it's an ordinary sheet of paper that is skillfully manipulated and takes on another form. Our story today is told from the perspective of a Chinese American man who's looking back on his childhood, and it's impressive that Ken Liu does not shortchange the feelings or the complexity that come with being a child or that come with being an adult looking back on one's childhood. That's about it for right now. So if you're ready, let's take a deep breath. The paper menagerie by ken liu. One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what mom and dad tried to. Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table. Ken Ken, she said as she pulled a sheet of wrapping paper from on top of the fridge. For years mom carefully sliced open the wrappings around Christmas gifts and saved them on top of the fridge in a thick stack. She set the paper down, plain side facing up, and began to fold it. I stopped crying and watched her, curious. She turned the paper over and folded it again. She pleated, packed, tucked, rolled, and twisted until the paper disappeared between her cupped hands. Then she lifted the folded up paper packet to her mouth and blew into it like a balloon. Can, she said. Lao hu. She put her hands down on the table and let go. A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees. I reached out to Mom's creation. Its tail twitched and it pounced playfully at my finger. Rous. It growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and and rustling newspapers. I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring. Mom said, this is called origami. I didn't know this at the time, but Mom's kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath and thus moved with her life. This was her magic. Dad had picked mom out of a catalog one time when I was in high school. I asked dad about the details. He was trying to get me to speak to mom again. He had signed up for the introduction service back in the spring of 1973. Flipping through the pages steadily, he had spent no more than a few seconds on each page until he saw the picture of Mom. I've never seen this picture. Dad described it. Mom was sitting in a chair, her side to the camera, wearing a tight green silk cheongsam. Her head was turned to the camera so that her long black hair was draped artfully over her chest and shoulder. She looked out at him with the eyes of a calm child. That was the last page of the catalog I saw, he said. The catalog said she was 18, loved to dance, and spoke good English because she was from Hong Kong. None of these facts turned out to be true. He wrote to her, and the company passed their messages back and forth. Finally, he flew to Hong Kong to meet her. The people at the company had been writing her responses. She didn't know any English other than hello and goodbye. What kind of woman puts herself into a catalog so that she can be bought? The high school me thought I knew so much about Everything. Contempt felt good, like wine. Instead of storming into the office to demand his money back, he paid a waitress at the hotel restaurant to translate for them. She would look at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful, while I spoke, and when the girl began translating what I said, she'd start to smile. Slowly, he flew back to Connecticut and began to apply for the papers for her to come to him. I was born a year later, in the Year of the Tiger. At my request, mom also made a goat, a deer, and a water buffalo out of wrapping paper. They would run around the living room while Lao he chased after them, growling. When he caught them, he would press down until the air went out of them and they became just flat, folded up pieces of paper. I would then have to blow into them to re inflate them so they could run around some more. Sometimes the animals got into trouble. Once the water buffalo jumped into a dish of soy sauce on the table at dinner. He wanted to wallow like a real water buffalo. I picked him out quickly, but the capillary action had already pulled the dark liquid high up into his legs. The sauce softened, legs would not hold him up, and he collapsed onto the table. I dried him out in the sun, but his legs became crooked after that and he ran around with a limp. Mom eventually wrapped his legs in Saran wrap so that he could wallow to his heart's content, just not in soy sauce. Also, Lao Hu liked to pounce at sparrows when he and I played in the backyard. But one time a cornered bird struck back in desperation and tore his ear. He whimpered and winced as I held him, and mom patched his ear together with tape. He avoided birds after that. And then one day I saw a TV documentary about sharks and asked mom for one of my own. She made the shark, but he flapped about on the table. Unhappily. I filled the sink with water and put him in. He swam around and around happily. However, after a while, he became soggy and translucent and slowly sank to the bottom, the folds coming undone. I reached in to rescue him, and all I ended up with was a wet piece of paper. Lao Hu put his front paws together at the edge of the sink and rested his head on them, ears drooping, he made a low growl in his throat that made me feel guilty. Mom made a new shark for me, this time out of tin foil. The shark lived happily in a large goldfish bowl. Lau Hu and I liked to sit next to the bowl and watch the tinfoil shark chasing the goldfish. Lau Hu sticking His face up against the bowl on the other side so that I saw his eyes magnified to the size of coffee cups, staring at me from across the bowl. When I was 10, we moved to a new house across town. Two of the women neighbors came by to welcome us. Dad served them drinks and then apologized for having to run off to the utility company to straighten out the prior owners bills. Make yourselves at home. My wife doesn't speak much English, so don't think she's being rude for not talking to you. While I read in the dining room, mom unpacked in the kitchen. The neighbors conversed in the living room, not trying to be particularly quiet. He seems like a normal enough man. Why did he do that? Something about the mixing never seems right. The child looks unfinished. Slanty eyes, white face. A little monster. Do you think he can speak English? The women hushed. After a while they came into the dining room. Hello there. What's your name? Jack, I said. That doesn't sound very chinesy. Mom came into the dining room. Then she smiled at the women. The three of them stood in a triangle around me, smiling and nodding at each other with nothing to say until dad came back. Mark, one of the neighborhood boys, came over with his Star wars action figures. Obi Wan Kenobi's lightsaber lit up and he could swing his arms and say in a tinny voice, use the force. I didn't think the figure looked much like the real Obi Wan at all. Together we watched him repeat this performance five times on the coffee table. Can he do anything else? I asked. Mark was annoyed by my question. Look at all the details, he said. I looked at the details. I wasn't sure what I was supposed to say. Mark was disappointed by my response. Show me your toys. I didn't have any toys except my paper menagerie. I brought Lao Hu out from my bedroom. By then he was very worn, patched all over with tape and glue, evidence of the years of repairs mom and I had done on him. He was no longer as nimble and sure footed as before. I sat him down on the coffee table. I could hear the skittering steps of the other animals behind in the hallway, timidly peeking into the living room. Xiao Lao Hu, I said and stopped. I switched to English. This is Tiger. Cautiously, Lao Hu strode up and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands. Mark examined the Christmas wrap pattern of Lau Hu's skin. That doesn't look like a tiger at all. Your mom makes toys for you from trash. I had never thought of Lao Hu as trash. But looking at him now, he was really just a piece of wrapping paper. Mark pushed Obi Wan's head again. The lightsaber flashed. He moved his arms up and down. Use the force. Lao Hu turned and pounced, knocking the plastic figure off the table. It hit the floor and broke, and Obi Wan's head rolled under the couch. Lao Hu laughed. I joined him. Mark punched me hard. This was very expensive. You can't even find it in the stores now. It probably cost more than what your dad paid for your mom. I stumbled and fell to the floor. Lao Hu growled and leapt at Mark's face. Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Lao Hu was only made of paper, after all. Mark grabbed Lao Hu and his snarl was choked off as Mark crumpled him in his hand and tore him in half. He balled up the two pieces of paper and threw them at me. Here's your stupid, cheap Chinese garbage. After Mark left, I spent a long time trying without success, to tape together the pieces, smooth out the paper, and follow the creases to refold Lau Hu. Slowly the other animals came into the living room and gathered around us, me and the torn wrapping paper that used to be Lao Hu. My fight with Mark didn't end there. Mark was popular at school. I never want to think again about the two weeks that followed. I came home that Friday. At the end of the two weeks, Mom asked. I said nothing and went to the bathroom. I looked into the mirror. I look nothing like her. Nothing. At dinner I asked dad, do I have a chink face? Dad put down his chopsticks. Even though I had never told him what happened in school, he seemed to understand. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. No you don't. Mom looked at dad, not understanding. She looked back at me. Sao Chink English, I said. Speak English. She tried. What happened? I pushed the chopsticks and the bowl before me away. Stir fried green peppers with five spice beef. We should eat American food. Dad tried to reason. A lot of families cook Chinese. Sometimes we are not other families. I looked at him. Other families don't have moms who don't belong. He looked away, and then he put a hand on Mom's shoulder. I'll get you a cookbook. Mom turned to me. Boo. How? Choose English, I said, raising my voice. Speak English. Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. FA sao la. I brushed her hand away. I'm fine. Speak English. I was shouting. Speak English to him. Dad said to Mom. You knew this was going to happen someday. What did you expect? Mom dropped her hands to her side. She sat looking from dad to me and back to dad again. She tried to speak, stopped and tried again and stopped again. You have to, dad said. I've been too easy on you. Jack needs to fit in. Mom looked at him. If I say love, I feel here. She pointed to her lips. If I say I, I feel here. She put her hand over her heart. Dad shook his head. You are in America. Mom hunched down in her seat, looking like the water buffalo when Lao Hu used to pounce on him and squeeze the air of life out of him. And I want some real toys. Dad bought me a full set of Star wars action figures. I gave the Obi Wan Kenobi to Mark. I packed the paper menagerie in a large shoebox and put it under the bed. The next morning the animals had escaped and took over their old favorite spots in my room. I caught them all and put them back into the shoebox, taping the lid shut, but the animals made so much noise in the box that I finally shoved it into the corner of the attic, as far away from my room as possible. If mom spoke to me in Chinese, I refused to answer her. After a while she tried to use more English, but her accent and broken sentences embarrassed me. I tried to correct her. Eventually she stopped speaking altogether. If I were around, mom began to mime things if she needed to let me know something. She tried to hug me the way she saw American mothers did on tv. I thought her movements exaggerated, uncertain, ridiculous, graceless. She saw that I was annoyed and stopped. You shouldn't treat your mother that way, dad said, but he couldn't look me in the eyes as he said it. Deep in his heart he must have realized that he it was a mistake to have tried to take a Chinese peasant girl and expect her to fit in the suburbs of Connecticut. Mom learned to cook American style. I played video games and studied French. Every once in a while I would see her at the kitchen table, studying the plain side of a sheet of wrapping paper. Later, a new paper animal would appear on my nightstand and try to cuddle up to me. I caught them, squeezed them until the air went out of them, and then stuffed them away in the box in the attic. Mom finally stopped making the animals when I was in high school. By then her English was much better, but I was already at that age when I wasn't interested in what she had to say, whatever language she used to. Sometimes when I came home and saw her tiny body busily moving about in the kitchen singing a song in Chinese to herself. It was hard for me to believe that she gave birth to me. We had nothing in common. She might as well be from the moon. I would hurry on to my room where I could continue my all American pursuit of happiness.

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[LeVar Burton]

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[LeVar Burton]

Carvana's so easy. Just a click and we've got ourselves a car. See so many cars. That's a clicktastic inventory. And check out the financing options payments to fit our budget. I mean that's Clickonomics 101 delivery to our door. Just a hop, skip and a click away. And bot no better feeling than when everything just clicks. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. We all know that the future of driving is electric. The all electric Chevy Bolt EUV is ready to make the future of driving a reality of today. I recently had a chance to chat with tech lover and astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson. We talk in depth about the electric future. Here's a portion of that conversation. It is clear and all of the scientists, the experts have recently come out and said that in terms of global warming and climate science, we have reached a point of no return and there is no going back. There's no putting that Genie back in the bottle. So I know that I am looking for my next vehicle to be an electric vehicle. My query, Neil, is given the state that we're in, do we have enough time? I mean, they say that, that there are certain things that we can't roll the clock back on, but there is time to make certain changes. Is there enough time?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay, I have a simple answer for you.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

Well, before you answer, we're all going to die.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Well, this segment actually has a sponsorship with Chevrolet, and Chuck may have some insights into that.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

Yeah.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

For you. So, Chuck, what do you have?

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

Super excited about this, because as I always say, or try to point out, I'm very concerned about the environment, as you and Lavar are as well. And we're doing this segment in partnership with the Chevrolet Bolt euv, and I was able to take a tour of this car, and it's, it's some really exciting technology. So I'm, I'm, I'm really happy to talk.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. But that'll be relevant only if, to Lavar's point. What? Okay. Lavar probably has slightly more means than most people, so he could buy any car he wanted. And so. But he alone can't make this. He can't put the genie back in the bottle. But we need everyone to participate in one way or another. And so why is this car a part of that equation? That's what I want to know.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

The cool thing is you want to call it the electric vehicle of the people, if you want, because what they have done is made this accessible at an entry point that many people can enter the market.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

I mean, a price point.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

Yeah. But the truth is that the people who normally drive electric vehicles right now, you know, they're pretty expensive.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

And you can't expect sort of your average person to spend big parts of their pocketbook just to lead the way in the green movement. You need corporations to meet us somewhere, halfway or more than halfway.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

Right.

[LeVar Burton]

So this makes sense. This is good. So this is a. This is an electric SUV that has a price point that most people can meet.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

That's, that's most people who buy cars at all can meet. It should be able to meet.

[LeVar Burton]

Right?

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay. And but one other thing, Chuck. In the early days of electric vehicles, they had range of maybe 60 miles, 100 miles tops. So really, they were like town cars. You'd commute with it. Nobody's going on any trips first. How would you recharge it? You don't want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere. So what's going on here?

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

So the great thing, I mean, this is what really impressed me. So what you're talking about is range anxiety, which is kind of a hesitancy that affects a lot of people for getting an electric car like you said. But this car has, I would say, nearly a 250 mile range, depending on.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

How that's real distance.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

That's real distance, yes. And with respect to what you said.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Unless you live in Siberia or northern Canada, if you live in any place where people live, that'll get you to any near city for sure.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

Yeah. But before then, if you live in Siberia or like far north Canada, you just strap a bunch of dogs to the euv.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

Okay?

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

That gets you where you got to go until you got to actually use the battery.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

But I can hear the dogs talking now. They'll say, you know, when we get your ass to this destination, you're putting us in the car and we're driving.

[LeVar Burton]

Yes, yes. We're riding. We're riding. The Chevy Bolt EUV is the everyday electric vehicle for everyday people. Learn [e-mail] Electric Bolt EUV that's chevrolet.com Electric Bolt EUV now let's get back to our story. Dad and I stood, one on each side of mom, lying on the hospital bed. She was not yet even 40, but she looked much older. For years she had refused to go to the doctor for the pain inside her that she said was no big deal. By the time an ambulance finally carried her in, the cancer had spread far beyond the limits of surgery. My mind was not in the room. It was the middle of the on campus recruiting season and I was focused on resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed interview schedules. I schemed about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they'll offer to buy me. I understood intellectually that it was terrible to think about this while your mother lay dying, but that understanding didn't mean I could change how I felt. She was conscious. Dad held her left hand with both of his own. He leaned down to kiss her forehead. He seemed weak and old in a way that startled me. I realized that I knew almost as little about dad as I did about Mom. Mom smiled at him. I'm fine. She turned to me, still smiling. I know you have to go back to school. Her voice was so very weak it was difficult to hear her over the hum of the machines hooked up to her. Go. Don't worry about me. This is not a big deal. Just do well in school. I reached out to touch her hand because I thought that was what I was supposed to do. I was relieved. I was already thinking about the flight back and the bright California sunshine. She whispered something to dad. He nodded and left the room. Jack, if she was caught up in a fit of coughing and could not speak for some time, if I don't make it, don't be too sad and hurt your health. Focus on your life. Just keep that box you have in the attic with you. And every year at Qingming, just take it out and think about me. I'll be with you always. Cheng Ming was the Chinese festival for the dead. When I was very young, mom used to write a letter on Qingming to her dead parents back in China, telling them the good news about the past year of her life in America. She would read the letter out loud to me, and if I made a comment about something, she would write it down in the letter too. Then she would fold the letter into a paper crane and release it, facing west. We would then watch as the crane flapped its crisp wings on its long journey west towards the Pacific, towards China, towards the graves of Mom's family. It had been many years since I last did that with her. I don't know anything about the Chinese calendar, I said. Just rest, Mom. Just keep the box with you and open it once in a while. Just open. She began to cough again. It's okay, Mom. I stroked her arm awkwardly. Hi there, Mama. I me. Her cough took over again. An image from years ago flashed into my memory, mom saying ay and then putting her hand over her heart. All right, mom, stop talking. Dad came back, and I said that I needed to get to the airport early because I didn't want to miss my flight.

[Chuck (Chevrolet Representative)]

I.

[LeVar Burton]

She died when my plane was somewhere over Nevada. Dad aged rapidly after mom died. The house was too big for him and had to be sold. My girlfriend, Susan, and I went to help him pack and clean the place. Susan found the shoebox in the attic. The paper menagerie, hidden in the uninsulated darkness of the attic for so long, had become brittle, and the bright wrapping paper patterns had faded. I never seen origami like this, susan said. Your mom was an amazing artist. The paper animals did not move. Perhaps whatever magic had animated them stopped when mom died, or perhaps I had only imagined that these paper constructions were once alive. The memory of children could not be trusted. It was the first weekend in April, two years after Mom's death. Susan was out of town on one of her endless trips as a management consultant, and I was home lazily flipping through the TV channels. I paused at A documentary about sharks. Suddenly I saw in my mind Mom's hands as they folded and refolded tinfoil to make a shark for me while Lao Hu and I watched a Russell. I looked up and saw that a ball of wrapping paper and torn tape was on the floor next to the bookshelf. I walked over to pick it up for the trash. The ball of paper shifted, unfurled itself, and I saw that it was Lao he, who I hadn't thought about in a very long time. Rouse. Mom must have put him back together after I had given up. He was smaller than I remembered, or maybe it was just that back then my fists were smaller. Susan had put the paper animals around our apartment as decoration. She probably left Lao Hu in a pretty hidden corner because he looked so shabby. I sat down on the floor and reached out a finger. Lao. He's tail twitched and he pounced playfully. I laughed, stroking his back. Lao. He purred under my hand. How have you been, old buddy? Lau. He stopped playing. He got up, jumped with feline grace into my lap, and proceeded to unfold himself. In my lap was a square of creased wrapping paper, the plain side up. It was filled with dense Chinese characters. I had never learned to read Chinese, but I knew the characters for sun, and they were at the top, where you'd expect them in a letter addressed to you, written in Mom's awkward, childish ha writing. I went to the computer to check the Internet. Today was Qingming. I took the letter with me downtown, where I knew the Chinese. Tour buses stopped. I stopped every tourist asking, ninhui du sung quin ma, can you read Chinese? I hadn't spoken Chinese in so long that I wasn't sure if they understood. A young woman agreed to help. We sat down on a bench together, and she read the letter to me aloud. The language that I had tried to forget for years came back, and I felt the words sinking into me, through my skin, through my bones, until they squeezed tight around my heart. Son, we haven't talked in a long time. You are so angry when I try to touch you that I'm afraid. And I think maybe this pain I feel all the time now is something serious. So I decided to to write to you. I'm going to write in the paper animals I made for you that you used to like so much. The animals will stop moving when I stop breathing. But if I write to you with all my heart, I'll leave a little of myself behind on this paper in these words. Then if you think of me on Qingming when the spirits of the departed are are allowed to visit their families, you'll make the parts of myself I leave behind come alive too. The creatures I made for you will again leap and run and pounce. And maybe you'll get to see these words then. Because I have to write with all my heart. I need to write to you in Chinese. All this time, I still haven't told you the story of my life. When you were little, I always thought I'd tell you the story when you were older so you could understand. But somehow that chance never came up. I was born in 1957 in Serge Lu Village, Hebei Province. Your grandparents were both from very poor peasant families with few relatives. Only a few years after I was born, the great famines struck China during which 30 million people died. The first memory I have was waking up to see my mother eating dirt so that she could fill her belly and leave the last bit of flour for me. Things got better after that. Is famous for its papercraft, and my mother taught me how to make paper animals and give them life. This was practical magic in the life of the village. We made paper birds to chase grasshoppers away from the fields, and paper tigers to keep away the mice. For Chinese New Year, my friends and I made red paper dragons. I'll never forget the sight of all all those little dragons zooming across the sky overhead, holding up strings of exploding firecrackers to scare away all the bad memories of the past year. You would have loved it. Then came the cultural revolution in 1966. Neighbor turned on neighbor and brother against brother. Someone remembered that my mother's brother, my uncle, had left for Hong Kong back in 1946 and became a merchant there. Having a relative in Hong Kong meant we were spies and enemies of the people, and we had to be struggled against in every way. Your poor grandmother. She couldn't take the abuse and threw herself down a well. Then some boys with hunting muskets dragged your grandfather away one day into the woods. And he never came back. There I was a 10 year old orphan. The only relative I had in the world was my uncle in Hong Kong. I snuck away one night and climbed onto a freight train going south down in Guangdong Province. A few days later, some men caught me stealing food from a field. When they heard that I was trying to get to Hong Kong, they laughed. It's your lucky day. Our trade is to bring girls to Hong Kong. They hid me in the bottom of a truck along with other girls and smuggled us across the border. We were Taken to a basement and told to stand up and look healthy and intelligent for the buyers. Families paid the warehouse a fee and came by to look us over and select one of us to adopt. The Chen family picked me to take care of their two boys. I got up every morning at 4 to prepare breakfast. I fed and bathed the boys. I shopped for food. I did the laundry and swept the floors. I followed the boys around and did their bidding. At night, I was locked into a cupboard in the kitchen to sleep. If I was slow or did anything wrong, I was beaten. If the boys did anything wrong, I was beaten. If I was caught trying to learn English, I was beaten. Why do you want to learn English? Mr. Chen asked. You want to go to the police? We'll tell the police that you are a mainlander illegally in Hong Kong. They'd love to have you in their prison. Six years I lived like this. One day an old woman who sold fish to me in the morning market pulled me aside. I know girls like you. How old are you now? 16. One day the man who owns you will get drunk and he'll look at you and pull you to him, and you can't stop him. The wife will find out, and then you will think you really have gone to hell. You have to get out of this life. I know someone who can help. She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean and take care of my American husband, he'll give me a good life. It will was the only hope I had. And that was how I got into the catalog with all those lies and met your father. It is not a very romantic story, but it is my story. In the suburbs of Connecticut, I was lonely. Your father was kind and gentle with me, and I was very grateful to him. But no one understood me, and I understood nothing. But then you were born. I was so happy when I looked into your face and saw shades of my mother, my father and myself. I had lost my entire family, all of Shi Gulu, everything I ever knew and loved. But there you were. And your face was proof that they were real. I hadn't made them up. Now I had someone to talk to. I would teach you my language, and we could together remake a small piece of everything that I loved and lost. When you said your first words to me in Chinese that had the same accent as my mother and me, I cried for hours. When I made the first Jie Jim animals for you, and you laughed. I felt there were no worries in the world. You grew up a little, and now you could even help your father and I talk to each other. I was really at home now. I finally found a good life. I wished my parents could be here so that I could cook for them and give them a good life, too. But my parents were no longer around. You know what the Chinese think is the saddest feeling in the world? It's for a child to finally grow the desire to take care of his parents, only to realize that they were long gone. Son, I know that you do not like your Chinese eyes, which are my eyes. I know that you do not like your Chinese hair, which is my hair. But can you understand how much joy your very existence brought to me? And can you understand how it felt when you stopped talking to me and won't let me talk to you in Chinese? I felt like I was losing everything all over again. Why won't you talk to me, son? The pain makes it hard to write. The young woman handed the paper back to me. I could not bear to look into her face. Without looking up, I asked for her help in tracing out the character for I on the paper below Mom's letter. I wrote the character again and again on the paper, intertwining my pen strokes with her words. Young woman reached out and put a hand on my shoulder, and she got up and left, leaving me alone with my mother. Following the creases, I refolded the paper back into Lao Hu. I cradled him in the crook of my arm, and as he purred, we began the walk home. Are you as devastated as I am? Because that story kills me. And as. As painful a story as it is to read the balance, the counterpoint that Ken Liu uses with the. The magic. The. What is the right word? Nah, I guess the right word. The magic. Really? That's the right word. The magic that Ken Liu uses to balance out the grief and shame and sense of loss is really deft and amazing. I think Lou is brilliant in this story at taking us on this journey where, I mean, he's so adept at getting us to see, experience this life through the eyes of a child. And there is that point where it's like, oh, wait, maybe. Maybe he did imagine that the menagerie was alive and it was just a child's imagination that brought them to life. And I was totally willing to buy into that notion. And then when we get to the end and through his mom's letter, we discover, yeah, that was a special magic that she inherited. It was a tradition from her village that that magic was there, their gift, and. And that that Magic was indeed real. I love stories that have that element of magic realism in them. I, I genuinely believe in the magic that life can sometimes offer, that there is validity to that which we cannot see, that it's just as real, that that world is just as real as the tangible world, the one that is so solid to us. And I think it is in large measure my own suspension of disbelief in that other world, that unseen world that sort of allows for the magic to be present in my own life. The other thing that really strikes me hard about this story is this sense of identity and the self loathing that he goes through. I absolutely relate to that. Having had a difficult time as a young black kid growing up, becoming comfortable in the skin of a black person in this country was a real journey. It was a real journey for me that took years and years and years of process and, and therapy and just working on myself until I got to a place of self acceptance. But I really, I heavily identified with that boy who looked in the mirror and wanted so desperately not to see his mother's face reflected. That was, that was very real for me. There is, I believe, a parallel between the delicate nature of the menagerie. You know, the idea that they can, they can be squeezed, the life can be squeezed out of them, but yet they can be reanimated, re inflated with the breath of life. And that parallel to the nature of relationships how sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally, we squeeze the life out of them. We just choke the possibility of, of love off out of whatever fear, jealousy, misunderstanding. And sometimes those relationships can be reanimated, they can be brought back to life and sometimes we miss that opportunity. Right? And I think that's the main, for me, that's the main tragedy in this story is that he only. You know, there's a Joni Mitchell song that says, you don't know what you got till it's gone right? They pave paradise and they put up a parking lot. Sometimes we are completely clueless as to the value of the most valuable things in our lives until they're no longer accessible to us. Levar Burton Reads is produced by Julia Smith. Our editing and sound design by Adam Diebert. And my thanks as always to Matt Gourley. I'm also grateful to Eric Jorgensen for his help in producing this episode. And I want to give a special shout out to Cheeto Ni for helping us with the very complex Chinese pronunciations in this story. I hope I didn't muffle it too bad. Chi. Thank you. And a Big thanks to Ken Liu for allowing me to read the Paper Menagerie today. It's part of his short story collection of the same name. That's the Paper Menagerie from Saga Press. And if you like this story, you can find the audiobook version of it, narrated by Corey Brill and Joy Osmansky. It's available from Simon and Schuster Audio, and it's on Audible. And please, if you love the show, and I hope you do, and you'd like to help other people find it, give us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. And while you're at it, leave us a suggestion for the show. I've loved hearing your thoughts about the podcast and suggesting possible stories for upcoming episodes. LeVar Burton reads is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Chris Bannon and Ginny Radelette. I'm LeVar Burton and you can find me on Twitter @levarburton and LeVar Burton on Instagram. And if you have kids and want to expose them to terrific literature, check out skybrary. You can find Skybrary, my digital library of books and videos on the App Store, Android Kindle and [e-mail] I'll see you next time. But you don't have to take my word for it.

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

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