The Last Story of Mina Lee

Mina watches Korean reunion footage. She is almost 70 years old, and the old faces remind her of herself. It was 26 years earlier when she watched a similar show with Mr. Kim. She remembers that it was the day before Mr. Park attacked Lupe. She still has the gun.

Mina’s water broke during a shift at the supermarket, and Mrs. Baek took her to the hospital. When she saw her baby after two days of painful labor, she saw: “A monster, like her, born into a world, hollow—without a family, without aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, without even gravestones to call their own” (229). Women at work gossiped about her belly. Mina quit going to church when signs of her pregnancy became obvious. She cries in bed for weeks with the baby. She imagines leaving the baby and running away. Once she recovers, she washes dishes for a year while a local grandmother watches Margot.

She remembers a phone conversation with Margot. Rather than catching up on each other’s lives, they argued about not knowing each other’s languages. In Margot’s absence, Mina’s business became her child. She decided that she was not only reluctant to learn English; she hated the language and refused to use it whenever possible.