“
But now that I’m here, Taiwan feels like home. Isn’t it funny? The two of us here, so far away, brought together by the island?” I understood what she meant. The names of people and places had meaning and memories; she could mention a street, a site, and it would bloom before my eyes: the direction of the afternoon shadows, the odor of charcoal and exhaust and benjo sludge, the commotion of horns and voices. The sound of Taiwanese jumbled with Mandarin. There, however, our paths would never have crossed. America—or was it exile?—had erased our differences.
”
”