paper menagerie by ken liu essay

Racism in The Paper Menagerie Essay

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Need to write The Paper Menagerie essay? On this page, we’ve described the theme of racism in Paper Menagerie , as well as other story’s themes, symbolism, and literary devices.

Introduction

• Racism in the story
• Irony in the story
• Thesis Statement Examples
• Works Cited

Among other moral tragedies, racism occupies a prominent place since many people suffer from it both at external and internal levels. Prejudices based on ethnicity are particularly unfair and bitter because one’s race is not something one can choose. However, hearing scornful remarks from strangers is one thing, and enduring emotional contemptuousness from the closest people is another. In Ken Liu’s “The Paper Menagerie,” the tragedy of racism is depicted within a multicultural family. Also, it is a tragedy of the society the influence of which can be too devastating to heal. “The Paper Menagerie” teaches the audience how ungrateful and cruel a child can become under the pressure of others and warns that frequently, people realize their mistakes too late, when they cannot change anything.

Racism in Paper Menagerie

“The Paper Menagerie” is a story about the tragedy of racism because it depicts how unbearably difficult it is for someone to be different. People’s minds are constructed in such a way that the distinction in physical appearance inevitably leads to biased opinions, and frequently causes unfair treatment of others. However, the otherness is mostly ascribed to someone by individuals not belonging to their identity group rather than given by nature.

This is exactly the situation that occurred in the narrator’s family. His mother is the main victim of racism: it is not her fault that she is Chinese, but her son makes her feel terrible because of her ethnicity. The story is the embodiment of the racism tragedy because the closest people – a mother and her child – cannot get along.

The problem of racism is woven in “The Paper Menagerie” through the depiction of a multicultural family. It is not a common story of brutality where a gang of white youngsters beats up their African American peer. This tragedy is much deeper because it involves hatred of a child against his mother – the one who has given him life. And now, the boy seems to have forgotten all the sacrifices his mother made for him and all the good things she did for him.

He treats her only as someone whom his father “had picked <…>out of a catalogue” (Liu 27). The sad part about it all is that the son does not have any reasons to hate his mother except for the fact that she does not suit into the society in which he lives. Jack relishes his disgust and even admits that “contempt felt good” (Liu 27). However, the boy does not have any justification of his behavior and his cruel treatment of his mother.

Irony in Paper Menagerie

The essence of the tragedy is that racism is not born in an outsider, but it grows in someone who is actually a part of the race he hates. At first sight, it seems that the story is a tragedy for the mother since she is the one who suffers from the mockery of her own child. The poor woman who had experienced many sad events in her life thought that she has finally found her happiness. Unfortunately, the source of that happiness grew up to become the most painful stab in her heart. When Jack asks his father, “Do I have a chink face?” it is obvious that he disgusts his mother and everything connected with her national identity (Liu 32). However, since the boy takes after his mother, it is also a tragedy for him. He wants to be similar to his peers, but the irony is that he cannot escape reality.

Racism denies the mother her son’s love, and it denies Jack the possibility to live the life he has always wanted. They are both unhappy, each in their own way and under different circumstances. The problem of a generation gap is a phenomenon known to many people, but the tragedy of multicultural relationships is known only to those who have such families. Jack is the reason why his mother has become deeply depressed, and he is also the main cause of his own uneasiness.

The Paper Menagerie Thesis Statement Examples

• The fragility of love is one of the main themes in The Paper Menagerie.
• The Paper Menagerie focuses on one’s identity as both the source of joy and discomfort.
• In The Paper Menagerie, the paper animals made by Jack’s mother symbolize their Chinese identity.

“The Paper Menagerie” tells a story of the tragedy of racism in the family where the child decides he does not want to be related to his mother. The problem is that he is already similar to her even though he refuses to admit it. Racism is represented by scornful remarks and bitter treatment, and it denies the participants of the argument some of the most cherished dreams. Therefore, the story serves as a warning sign to those who neglect sincere love while seeking acceptance from insignificant people.

Liu, Ken. The Paper Menagerie . N.d. Web.

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Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Racism in The Paper Menagerie Essay." December 2, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/racism-in-ken-lius-the-paper-menagerie/.

The Paper Menagerie | Summary and Analysis

Summary of the paper menagerie by ken liu.

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu is a moving story about a boy of mixed race called Jack and his relationship with his mother. The main themes of this story are mother-son relationship, cultural differences, racism, identity and heritage.

The Paper Menagerie | Summary

His mother would make all different types of animals with paper- anything the narrator asked. Jack’s paper tiger, Laohu, would chase after them, and while watching shows about sharks, the narrator’s mother would make shark origami, too. When the narrator- we now learn his name is Jack- was ten, his family moved to a new neighbourhood where they were visited by two women- their new neighbours. For the first time, Jack hears them speak ill of their mixed family when they think he’s not listening. They condemn his American father for marrying a Chinese woman, and even call Jack “unfinished” looking. Not long after, one of the neighbourhood boys, Mark, came over to play with Star Wars action figures. Mark was annoyed that Jack didn’t show much interest, and when asked to bring out his toys, Jack had nothing but Laohu. Laohu pounced on Mark and as a result, the light saber fell and broke. Mark pushed Jack in anger, furiously shouting that “It probably cost more than how much your dad paid for your mom!” before crushing and tearing Laohu and going home. No matter how much he tried, Jack could not repair Laohu.

Gradually, Jack stops speaking to his mother. His father buys him a star wars set, from which he returns to Mark the object he broke. He puts all his origami animals into a shoebox under his bed and felt embarrassed whenever she tried to mime things for him to understand. His father told him not to treat his mother like that, but he couldn’t look Jack in the eye. His mother still made paper animals for him which tried to cuddle up to him in his sleep, but he would crush the air out of them. When he came to high school, his mother stopped making the animals. Her English had improved, but Jack was too old to talk much to her anyway. He continued his steady pursuit of the American Dream.

The story then moves to the father and Jack at the hospital, standing on either side of the mother’s bed. She is barely 40, but weak and frail with cancer in her body  Jack feels awkward, not knowing what to do. His mind constantly wanders to his California college campus where he should be for the recruitment session. He knows he should not think of that when his mother is bedridden, but he can’t help it. She tells him not to worry about her, to just do well in school. She then requests one thing- if she does not make it, she asks him to take out his shoebox of paper animals once a year, on Qingming, or Chinese Death Day, and think of her. He tells her that he knows nothing of the  Chinese calendar. She then tries to tell him in her mother tongue that she loves him, her voice hoarse. Jack understands her words and awkwardly tells her not to talk. He soon leaves, as he does not want to be late for his flight. His mother passes away sometime when he is flying above Nevada.

After his mother died, Jack’s father aged rapidly. The house had to be sold, and while Jack and his girlfriend Susan were clearing out the house, she found the shoebox of origami, exclaiming in amazement at its intricacy. Jack notes that the paper animals don’t move anymore, and wonders whether they stopped breathing when his mother did. He then thinks that the animals’ movement must have just been a figment of his childish imagination. It was only two years after the death that Jack felt a tinge of emotion- Susan was on a business trip and he was watching TV when he saw a channel about sharks. Suddenly, the image of his mother making an origami shark appeared in his mind. As soon as that happens, Laohu leaps out of the shadows. His mother must have put it back together herself after Jack gave up. Abd Susan, who had kept the origami pieces around the house, must have kept this one in the corner because of how worn it was.

Jack stroked Laohu, who leapt around playfully. He felt happy to see him after a long time. Then, Laohu stopped jumping and unfolded himself to reveal dense, Chinese characters- Jack’s mother’s handwriting. On checking online, he realises it is Qingming. He cannot read Chinese, so he asks around until he finds a stranger who is willing to read the contents out to him. In the letter, his mother talks about her feelings, wonders why he doesn’t speak to her anymore, and most importantly: tells him her life story. She was born in a very poor province during the Great Famines of China. After things got a little better, her own mother taught her to make red paper dragons and breathe life into them, something she believed Jack would have loved. Then, there was a cultural revolution. Because they had a relative in Hong Kong, they were considered spies. Jack’s grandparents both died, while his mother tried to run away to Hong Kong. She was found by a man whose business was to take girls to Hong Kong and sell them as house servants. For years, Jack’s mother worked as a maid, and was beaten if anything was done wrong. At sixteen, she received advice to leave the house before she became too old and things could get messy. That is how she ended up in the catalogue where Jack’s father found her.

The Paper Menagerie | Analysis

A majority of this story is written in past tense, as the narrator describes the incidents that led him to his current set of thoughts and feelings. Further, we do not know his name immediately- we find out that the narrator is called Jack when another character addresses him. This creates the feeling that we, too, are slowly discovering more about his past with his walk down memory lane. The Paper Menagerie covers very deep themes, but since it’s done in the form of a collection of anecdotes and recollections, the readers are able to understand it in situational context. This way, rather than simply feeling angry or upset at Jack for his treatment towards his mother, we get the opportunity to take in his social context and link that to his behaviour. Further, we are able to understand the depth of these themes as they are in real life scenarios. Liu mainly employs dialogue and description. Most importantly, his depiction of Jack’s thoughts as he grows, and his vivid narration of the paper animals that had life in them, created a picture for the readers to clearly imagine. There is also abundant use of literary devices like personification and symbolism. The main themes of this story are mother-son relationship, cultural differences, racism, identity and heritage.

When Jack starts ignoring his mother, Liu structures a heartbreaking back-and-forth dialogue between the three family members. In this, he encapsulates themes of identity, discrimination and cultural differences. Jack represents discrimination- he faces bullying and racial slurs from his peers because of his mixed race and Chinese heritage. This makes him want to forget everything about that side of him and become completely American like everyone else. His father represents cultural differences. An American man himself, he is well aware that Jack needs to fit in and the Chinese side of his identity will make it difficult for him. He requests the mother to learn English because she “ knew this would happen one day.”   And finally, the mother represents identity. She has strong love for her son and gratitude to the father, and she knows that she needs to adapt to the American setting, hence she complies to their request. But before doing so, she delivers a single, powerful dialogue which captures the emotion behind identity: she tells them that when she says “love” in English, she feels it on her lips. But when she says “ ai”  in Chinese, she feels it in her heart. The fact that she says this in broken English further highlights the importance of one’s native language and the value it holds to a person’s identity.

This thought process pushes him so far from his mother that he does not even mourn at her death. As she lies on her deathbed, Jack’s mind is elsewhere- on his college campus. We see that even in her final moments, his mother tells him with improved English not to worry about her and to just focus on his studies. The awkward way in which he tries to reply, not sure how to comfort her, emphasises the years they have spent apart despite living in the same house. He had been contemptuous of even the Chinese songs she used to hum in the kitchen- it had drawn a wall between them completely. Despite this, his mother has unrelenting love for her son. Her last words to him are in Chinese-  “Son, mother loves you”.  The notable word here is “  ai”  which means “love”- she says it in Chinese, because only then does it come from the heart. When Jack and Susan clean up the house and she notices the origami, Jack mentions that they don’t seem to breathe anymore- this shows that in the back of his mind, he still associates his mother with that sense of magic.

Two years later, a shark documentary reminds him of his mother. It is as though the old memories are pushing their way forth from the back of his mind. The moment acts as a rebirth of his identity, represented by Laohu pouncing back to life and Jack welcoming him. The importance of this moment is strengthened with the discovery of the letter written inside Laohu. This is extremely significant- Laohu represents Jack. Hence, the mothers letter being written inside Laohu represents the fact that she and her culture and identity will always be inside him, a part of him, no matter what- and so will her love for him. Reading the letter on Qingming, Jack comes to understand the struggles faced by his mother and the joy his birth brought her. He is hit by several emotions at once as he processes everything- guilt, sadness, pain, and most prominently: love for his mother, as can be seen in the way he writes “ ai”  as many times as he can.

Circular Breathing | Summary and Analysis

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The Paper Menagerie

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One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.

Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.

“ Kan, kan ,” 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.

“ Kan ,” she said, “ laohu .” 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. “ Rawrr-sa ,” it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers. I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

“ Zhe jiao zhezhi ,” 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 eighteen, 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 ‘good-bye.’”

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 Laohu 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 reinflate 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, Laohu 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.

Laohu 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 tinfoil. The shark lived happily in a large goldfish bowl. Laohu and I liked to sit next to the bowl to watch the tinfoil shark chasing the goldfish, Laohu 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 ten, 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 owner’s 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 Chinesey.”

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 Laohu 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 laohu ,” I said, and stopped. I switched to English. “This is Tiger.” Cautiously, Laohu strode up and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands.

Mark examined the Christmas-wrap pattern of Laohu’s skin. “That doesn’t look like a tiger at all. Your mom makes toys for you from trash?”

I had never thought of Laohu 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!”

Laohu 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. “ Rawwww ,” Laohu 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. Laohu growled and leapt at Mark’s face.

Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Laohu was only made of paper, after all.

Mark grabbed Laohu 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 Laohu. Slowly, the other animals came into the living room and gathered around us, me and the torn wrapping paper that used to be Laohu.

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. “ Xuexiao hao ma ?” 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. “ Sha jiao chink ?”

“English,” I said. “Speak English.”

She tried. “What happen?”

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. O ther 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. “ Bu haochi ?”

“English,” I said, raising my voice. “Speak English.”

Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. “ Fashao 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 ‘ ai, ’ 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 Laohu used to pounce on him and squeeze the air of life out of him.

“And I want some real toys.”

From THE PAPER MENAGERIE . Used with permission of Saga Press. Copyright © 2016 by Ken Liu.

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The Sitting Bee

Short Story Reviews

The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

In The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu we have the theme of resentment, connection, culture, identity, prejudice, acceptance, struggle and love. Narrated in the first person by a man called Jack the reader realises after reading the story that Liu may be exploring the theme of resentment. Jack though he has had a happy childhood longs to be like other American boys. Due to his heritage he knows that he sticks out and that people are prejudicial towards him simply because he has a Chinese mother. This may be significant as Liu may be attempting to highlight how racist America can be towards those who look different. Something which is very much the case for Jack when he is younger. He struggles in high school simply because he looks Chinese. It is also noticeable that the connection that Jack has with his mother when he was younger disappears when he rebels against her based solely on the fact of who she is. It is as though Jack is not proud of his mother. If anything life gets complicated for Jack as he grows older and tries to formulate his own identity. An identity in which he is displeased with due to his mother’s heritage.

Though some critics might suggest that Jack has very little to worry about. It might be important to remember that he is of an impressionable age when he stops talking to his mother. He is consciously making a decision not to embrace her culture. Though as a child her origami brought him so much happiness and any problem that Jack encountered with the origami was resolved by his mother. This close connection is lost when Jack enters his teen years and all he wants to do is fit in with other children. Something he finds hard to do because of the way he looks. If anything Jack feels as though his life is in a crisis. He knows that his mother was married to his father by way of a catalogue. She won’t speak English and she doesn’t appear to be able to adapt to American life very well. To compound matters Jack is refusing to side with his mother and take on board that she is from a different culture. Rather than embracing his mother’s culture Jack shuns it. Favouring instead to follow what he believes is an American culture. Both son and mother are separated from each other.

How hurtful this actually is to Jack’s mother is noticeable by the letter that she writes on Laohu. It describes in detail the type of life that Jack’s mother has lived and the difficulties that she has had to endure. Difficulties that Jack had no previous understanding of nor does it appear as though he wished to understand when his mother was alive. Something which would further play on the theme of connection. If anything Jack’s deliberate action of disconnecting from his mother has left him without any sense of who his mother really was. Which may leave some readers to suggest that Jack may have been selfish when he was younger. However it might be important to remember that Jack felt pressurized to be accepted when he was younger and if this meant excluding his mother then this was something that Jack was prepared to do. Jack’s father’s role in the story is also interesting as by buying him toys rather than allowing him to continue playing with his collection of origami. Jack’s father in many ways has assimilated Jack into an American way of life. Something that suits Jack though must have caused pain to his mother.

The end of the story is also interesting as Jack appears to see the error in his ways. Something that is noticeable by his continual insertion of the word ‘ai’ (love) into his mother’s letter. It is as though Jack realises that his mother had to accept the struggles she faced in life. Struggles that Jack himself has never had to face. If anything Jack feels connected to his mother for the first time since he was a teenager and understands the hardships she had to go through. Though Jack shunned his mother’s love. She never stopped loving him. There is also a sense that Jack finally accepts who he is. That he is no longer ashamed of his identity and that he is proud of his mother. By reading his mother’s letter Jack is able to understand just how difficult life was for his mother and perhaps he can see how petty he himself may have been when he began to exclude his mother from his life. In order to fit in with others Jack had forgotten about his culture and if anything he was embarrassed by his mother. Something the reader suspects is no longer the case after Jack reads the letter.

• The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri
• The Man Who Walked on the Moon by J.G. Ballard
• The Doll’s House by Katherine Mansfield
• Thank You, M’am by Langston Hughes
• Stories of Ourselves

20 comments

Could u give me any evidence that supports that ignorance is a theme in this story?

Can you give me the characteristics of his mother?

Why does the main character suffer discrimination? What is it due to?

The main character suffers discrimination because he lives in a mostly white town in Conneticut

What were some if the struggles jack had with his mother?

n childhood, Jack had no other toys but only those paper animals made by his mother. … On one hand, he was confronted with discrimination from the whites because of his Chinese identity; on the other hand, he despised his Chinese mother and even other Chinese groups under the influence of American ideology.

What are some cultural barriers that are overcome in the story by Jack and/or his mom?

What is the point of view in this story?

Thank you, this helps me understand more but I have a few more questions.

What racist discrimination did the Mom and child feel when they moved in Connecticut? Cite sentences or statements in the story where discrimination take place.

the parts where jack was bullied/american starwars toy over traditional origami from the mother’s village

is there a good quote in the story that shows how Jack is distant from his heritage/culture. and maybe another one that shows how he learned to appreciate it?

good work 😉

Can I know what is the impression of Jack?

can i know what is the thematic messages of the paper menagerie?

could you give me a thesis sentence

How does Jack’s character change from the beginning of the story to the end?

Is there any examples of regret as a theme in the story?

If all you folks asking questions are here in order to write your Unit 3 discussions and essay, just know that your professor is here too and watching. *gives y’all side-eye in don’t even try it bruh*

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Read Ken Liu's amazing story that swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards

Ken Liu's incredible story "Paper Menagerie" just became the first work of fiction to win all three of SF's major awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the World Fantasy Award. And we're proud to be able to reprint the whole story, right here at io9. Here's your chance to find out what all the excitement is about, and discover one of science fiction's fastest rising stars.

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"paper menagerie".

One of my earliest memories starts with me sobbing. I refused to be soothed no matter what Mom and Dad tried.

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Dad gave up and left the bedroom, but Mom took me into the kitchen and sat me down at the breakfast table.

" Kan, kan ," 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.

" Kan ," she said. " Laohu. " 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. " Rawrr-sa ," it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers.

I laughed, startled, and stroked its back with an index finger. The paper tiger vibrated under my finger, purring.

" Zhe jiao zhezhi ," 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 eighteen, 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 Laohu 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, Laohu 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.

Laohu 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. Laohu and I liked to sit next to the bowl to watch the tin foil shark chasing the goldfish, Laohu 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 ten, 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 owner's 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 Chinesey."

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 Laohu 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 laohu ," I said, and stopped. I switched to English. "This is Tiger." Cautiously, Laohu strode up and purred at Mark, sniffing his hands.

Mark examined the Christmas-wrap pattern of Laohu's skin. "That doesn't look like a tiger at all. Your Mom makes toys for you from trash?"

I had never thought of Laohu 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!"

Laohu 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. " Rawwww ," Laohu 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. Laohu growled and leapt at Mark's face.

Mark screamed, more out of fear and surprise than pain. Laohu was only made of paper, after all.

Mark grabbed Laohu 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 Laohu. Slowly, the other animals came into the living room and gathered around us, me and the torn wrapping paper that used to be Laohu.

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. " Xuexiao hao ma? " 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. " Sha jiao chink ? "

"English," I said. "Speak English."

She tried. "What happen?"

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. " Bu haochi? "

"English," I said, raising my voice. "Speak English."

Mom reached out to touch my forehead, feeling for my temperature. " Fashao 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 some day. 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 ' ai, ' 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 Laohu 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 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.

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.

Dad and I stood, one on each side of Mom, lying on the hospital bed. She was not yet even forty, 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 very weak and 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."

Qingming 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.

" Haizi, mama ai ni — " Her cough took over again. An image from years ago flashed into my memory: Mom saying ai and then putting her hand over her heart.

"Alright, 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.

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've 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 tin foil to make a shark for me, while Laohu and I watched.

A rustle. 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 Laohu, who I hadn't thought about in a very long time. " Rawrr-sa ." 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 Laohu in a pretty hidden corner because he looked so shabby.

I sat down on the floor, and reached out a finger. Laohu's tail twitched, and he pounced playfully. I laughed, stroking his back. Laohu purred under my hand.

"How've you been, old buddy?"

Laohu 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 son , and they were at the top, where you'd expect them in a letter addressed to you, written in Mom's awkward, childish handwriting.

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, " Nin hui du zhongwen 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.

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 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 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 Sigulu 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 thirty 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. Sigulu is famous for its zhezhi 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 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 ten-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 Chin family picked me to take care of their two boys. I got up every morning at four 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. Chin 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, sixteen? 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 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 Sigulu, 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 zhezhi 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 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 ai on the paper below Mom's letter. I wrote the character again and again on the paper, intertwining my pen strokes with her words.

The young woman reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. Then she got up and left, leaving me alone with my mother.

Following the creases, I refolded the paper back into Laohu. I cradled him in the crook of my arm, and as he purred, we began the walk home.

Copyright (c) 2011 Ken Liu, first published in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION, Mar/Apr. 2011.

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'The Paper Menagerie' by Ken Liu - Complete Study Guide

Subject: English

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Lesson (complete)

Last updated

17 November 2023

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Ken Liu, Writer

Author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

• Publisher: Gallery / Saga Press
• Editor: Joe Monti
• Available in: Hardback, Paperback, Ebook, Audio
• ISBN: 9781481424363
• Published: October 4, 2016

From the publisher:

Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his multiple award-winning stories for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume. With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. This mesmerizing collection features many of Ken’s award-winning and award-finalist stories, including: “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards), “Mono No Aware” (Hugo Award winner), “The Waves” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” (Nebula and Sturgeon Award finalists), “All the Flavors” (Nebula Award finalist), “The Litigation Master and the Monkey King” (Nebula Award finalist), and the most awarded story in the genre’s history, “The Paper Menagerie” (The only story to win the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards). Insightful and stunning stories that plumb the struggle against history and betrayal of relationships in pivotal moments, this collection showcases one of our greatest and original voices.

The audiobook version is narrated by Corey Brill and Joy Osmanski. Here’s a sample .

Here’s my round-up post of reviews, essays, and interviews about the book.

Praise for The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

I know this is going to sound hyperbolic, but when I’m reading Ken Liu’s stories, I feel like I’m reading a once-in-a-generation talent. I’m in awe.

– Jamie Ford – NYT bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

[A] brilliant, substantial, yet somehow still all-too-short collection of stories and novellas… It’s bursting with stories yearning to be told to everyone, and it’s a volume that absolutely everyone should read.

– Andrew Liptak writing for The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

These remarkable stories highlight Liu’s themes of family, love, and politics and gathered in one collection pack an even bigger punch. Those who revere shorter speculative works will definitely want this book.

– Library Journal starred review

Gracefully written and often profoundly moving, these stories are high-water marks of contemporary speculative fiction.

– Publishers Weekly starred review

I have never been so moved by a collection of short fiction. I was at times afraid to read more.

– Amal El-Mohtar writing for NPR

Full table of contents:

• State Change
• The Perfect Match

• The Literomancer

• An Advanced Reader’s Picture Book of Comparative Cognition ( previously unpublished )

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The Paper Menagerie

This short story from the realm of magical realism problematises resentment, prejudice and peer pressure. Ken Liu’s fantasy story depicts the struggle of a woman with a migrant background between retaining her ‘old’ identity and simultaneously adopting a new one. Her son Jack re-tells several episodes of their lives, showcasing his mother’s special talent: When she folds animals out of paper, the little creatures actually come to life. However, the bond between mother and son is thoroughly tested by the barriers their differing languages create.

This story is suitable for interdisciplinary teaching, e.g. in Ethics, Social Science and Art.

Short fiction · United States · 2011

Critical edition

Liu, Ken. The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories . Head of Zeus, 2016. 8 pp., ISBN 9781784975692

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In favour of this entry.

• Award-winning
• Intercultural perspectives
• Interdisciplinary or cross-curricular teaching
• Silenced voices
• Students can identify with the text
• User suggestion

Recommended for these classrooms

• Years 9–10 (Realschule)
• Years 11–12 (Grundkurs)
• Years 11–12 (Leistungskurs)

Berufsbildende Schule

Online resources.

• Ken Liu's homepage
• Book listing on buchhandel.de
• Book listing on openlibrary.org

Suitable for discussing these topics

Anglophone societies.

• Equality and inequality
• Food and cuisine
• Intercultural contact
• Metropolises
• Multiculturalism
• Othering and exclusion

Coming of Age

• Becoming an active member of society
• Experiencing ethnic difference
• Family and friendship
• Identity construction
• Stereotypes

Education and work

• Talents and interests

History and politics

• American dream
• Immigration
• National identity and hegemony

Science and Environment

• Plants and animals

The Paper Menagerie

107 pages • 3 hours read

The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Story 2 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Story 2 summary: “state change”.

In this story, the characters’ souls are outside their bodies in various forms. Rina, the protagonist , has an ice cube soul and, to keep her soul intact, she has two refrigerators in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the bedroom, one in the hallway, and a cooler in the bathroom. She finds that “the bass chorus of all the motors, a low, confident hum” (10) makes her feel secure. She has pictures of glaciers and icebergs on her walls, along with a picture of her college roommate, Amy.

Amy has a pack of cigarettes as her soul, and it was half empty by the time she met Rina. When they lived together, Amy took Rina to a bar. Amy asked the bartender to keep the ice cube safe, but Rina was too worried to have fun. Amy smoked one of her cigarettes and told a boy that if he made Rina laugh before she finished it, they’d both go home with him. She said, “All life is an experiment” (20).

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