Paper cuts
Origami Dragon from Best Design Tutorials
Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu has swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. No short story has done that before. Read it and tell us what you think.
Options (updated)
A. Brilliant.
B. Good, but it’s not The Star or Flowers for Algernon.
C. Schmaltzy—Cathartic tears and snot, filial guilt response, etc.
D. Schmaltzy—Yucch.
E. I don’t like it, I don’t hate it.
F. Other reaction
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.
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.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
November 12th, 2012 at 12:32
A. Brilliant. I cried after reading it.
November 12th, 2012 at 14:16
Ume-Amy Tan! But schmaltzy me loved it. Thanks for sharing the link. It made me cry at work. :P
November 12th, 2012 at 16:44
It’s a mix of B and C for me. I guess I found it schmaltzy. You could see where it was going from a mile away, and I could have done without the letter. But it had some pretty effective moments and had me teary-eyed.
November 12th, 2012 at 19:30
A and C. Good thing I was already home when I read it. It did remind me of Amy Tan.
November 12th, 2012 at 19:30
“She would look at me, her eyes halfway between scared and hopeful, while I spoke”
I cried when I read this I had to stop.
November 12th, 2012 at 19:46
touching! but schmaltzy in some parts.
i still lovet.
November 12th, 2012 at 20:25
first C… tugged at my heart… though at times I thought of Amy Tan…I felt there should be more fantastical elements, though… tended to meander for a while, but with a little tightening of some parts of the story, it will be very good. but is it fantasy? for westerners, probably… but for asians, kulang pa…
November 12th, 2012 at 23:22
C. I was biting my lip so hard to distract myself. Reading it in the office is a bad idea.
November 13th, 2012 at 10:23
A.
i loved it.
it went down my throat like smooth scotch.
smooth ride, totally navigable, no humps – my gold standard for anything i read.
November 13th, 2012 at 11:20
E.
Sigh.
November 13th, 2012 at 15:09
They’re Chinese. Origami is a Japanese art. Curious.
November 15th, 2012 at 10:39
B & C. Pulled at my heartstrings, but surprised with the awards. It’s heavy. A bit moralist, though unpretentious.
November 16th, 2012 at 07:25
I cried in the same way I did when I watched Atonement. For me, an effective story means it’s able to give the reader some sort of an emotional attachment
November 16th, 2012 at 15:10
D. Kinda maudlin. As an Asian raised on melodrama, ilang beses ko nang naencounter yung ganyang eksena. Pero aminin, medyo na-choke up ako sa last few lines.
November 18th, 2012 at 22:59
B.
It’s not bad..but not sure if it deserved winning all those awards and being the first to do it? I’m not a writer by any means but I feel like Flowers for Algernon is leagues better.