Chapter 1
The chapter opens with the narrator addressing his mother (“Ma”) in a letter that revisits a specific moment at a Virginia rest stop where she reacts with horror to a taxidermied buck, questioning the permanence of death. He reflects on the buck as a symbol of endless death. The narrative then shifts to a description of monarch butterflies migrating from Michigan to Mexico, linking their fragile journey to the fragility of life.
He recounts a childhood prank where he jumped out shouting “Boom!” causing his mother to scream and sob, hinting at her hidden trauma from war. He remembers Mrs. Callahan, his ESL teacher, teaching him to read through the children’s book Thunder Cake, and his attempt to teach his mother to read, which ends when she rejects the book, saying she doesn’t need to read.
Various episodic memories follow: a bruised forearm from a remote‑control accident he lies about; his mother’s sudden urge to buy coloring books at Walmart and spend months coloring landscapes, expressing that she “goes away” in the colors; a violent incident where she throws Legos at his head and later tends to his wound while offering McDonald’s; his rereading of Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary and its influence on his decision to write.
He describes Saturdays spent with his mother at a mall, her dressing up, applying pomade to his hair, and their modest purchase of a small bag of Godiva chocolates, highlighting their socioeconomic constraints. A vivid scene of a deer in fog appears, followed by an exposition on monarch migration, drawing parallels between borderless sentences and country.
The narrator recalls a visit to a Chinese butcher where his mother jokes about pork ribs resembling burned bodies, and the memory of a milk jug spilling on his shoulder. He tells of riding a Six Flags roller coaster with his mother, her subsequent vomiting, and an unspoken lack of gratitude. At Goodwill they buy yellow‑tagged items; she asks if he looks “like a real American” while holding a white dress for a possible occasion.
A tense kitchen knife episode occurs: his mother picks up a knife then tells him to “Get out,” prompting him to flee the house. He later experiences a panic attack after seeing his cousin Phuong’s face on a NYC train, calling his mother who hums “Happy Birthday” despite the incident being unrelated to his birthday.
He provides a physical self‑description (age twenty‑eight, 5’4”, 112 lb) and declares he writes from within his mother’s former body. He recounts a nail‑salon conversation in Vietnamese about a woman’s daughter Julie dying of cancer in the backyard, revealing his mother’s own mother’s death from cancer and her emotional outburst about a “fucking horse.”
He narrates the moment at age thirteen when he finally says “Stop” as his mother hits him, after which she leaves to buy eggs and never strikes him again. He reflects on monarchs passing memory to offspring and asks when a war ends. He describes waking to Chopin music in an empty room, calling for his mother, and hearing her breathing.
Further reflections include his mother’s statement that the human eye is God’s loneliest creation, a moment where she declares “I’m not a monster. I’m a mother,” and his musings on the concept of monster, PTSD, and the symbolism of a white dress he wore at Goodwill, which made him a target of bullying. He imagines monarchs fleeing the napalm clouds of his mother’s Vietnam childhood and becoming fire‑proof, concluding that both he and his mother are monsters, yet he cannot turn away from her, having placed her inside God’s loneliest creation (the eye).