Summary

In Part II, “A Bite of Rockfish, Taste the Universe” (49), Chapter 1, Young rushed out the door to see his mother, who he calls Umma, at the hospital. He looked inside his mailbox and saw a ream of yellow paper. He recognized it as his diary, which he had given to a boyfriend five years earlier, a man he called “hyung” (50). A note on the diary read in part, “I'm sorry about before. About a lot of things. All of it” (50). The note also said that hyung would be leaving the country and would like to see Young first at, “The same place and time we promised before” (51).

At the hospital, Young looked at his mother's things, including a picture of her in a graduation cap and two of Young's published books. Umma had been suffering from cancer for six years and...