Mi Gook. This is a magic word. It can make Uhmma and Apa stop fighting like some important person is knocking on the door. Dirty brown boxes all tied up, with big black letters in the middle and little pictures all in the corner. They come from Mi Gook. Uhmma says they are from my Gomo. She is older than Apa. His big Uhn-nee. Inside the boxes there are funny toys for me. Like the one that plays tinkle-tinkle music and the scary man with rainbow paint on his face and hair jumping out.
This quote occurs in the book, describing the circumstances revolving around the family’s decision to emigrate to America. “Mi Gook” is, in fact, the word which Young Ju’s four-year-old self associates with America and everything associated with it resonates with magical properties such as that described above. To a larger extent, “Mi Gook” is a word that can be translated into every language around the world populated by those who have dreamed of coming to America based on stories they have heard which also resonate with a kind of magic.
A scene in the film Golden Door shows Italian on the verge of making the voyage to Ellis Island looking at photographs from American showing giant vegetables and money literally growing on trees without understanding that they are the result of trick photography. Native-born Americans can have trouble understanding just how much the mythos of their country influences the decision of those born elsewhere to make the attempt at becoming an immigrant. That element is beautifully rendered here in its absolute simplicity. While those who actually might have come to America believing money grew on trees is likely a spectacularly small fraction, there is really no difference between the imagery because the point is that American seems to be a place of wonder and magic in comparison to the living conditions of anyone desperate enough to leave behind everything they know to make the journey to the unknown.
"Nineteen, thirty-one, twenty-seven, fourteen, thirty-nine. This week's lucky numbers are ten, fourteen, nineteen, twenty- seven, thirty-one, thirty-nine. Thank you for playing Superlotto."
One of the themes the novel explores is the stereotype (certainly not the most negative in the world, but a stereotype nevertheless) that Asian immigrants are usually able to attain economic success easier than those from other regions. This theme collides with that of assimilating into the pop culture milieu of America in the sequence in Young Ju buys a lottery ticket thinking it is the answer to their financial hardship without fully understanding how the state-run Lotto works. She receives a double dose of criticism first upon learning that matching just one number earns no money and then being rebuked for wasting a dollar on the ticket. The full announcement of the numbers drawn in the Lotto as watched on television is very subtle but powerful reminder that all the cultural differences in America mean nothing in the face of the unity of financial disenfranchisement that binds hundreds of millions together.
After the police handcuff Apa and take him away, Uhmma drives down to the police station with her face so badly bruised and misshapen an officer forces her to go to a hospital. Even after ten stitches on the cut above her eyebrow, two stitches on the corner of her lip, and taped ribs, Uhmma will not press charges.
Apa is the narrator’s father and Uhmma is her mother, of course. After a long history of domestic violence perpetrated against the entire family by Apa—with special focus on his wife, of course—things finally reach a moment of crisis and Young Ju desperately calls 911 out of fear that mere battery is this time going to turn into murder as her father has turned his attention to Uhmma after she intervenes to stop him from wailing away on their daughter. Throughout the narrative, Apa has been a disturbing presence because of either an unwillingness to assimilate or an inability; most likely the former stimulated by the latter. At any rate, despite her mother’s unwillingness to press charges, this incident effectively marks the end of the family unit. Apa will soon be on his way back to Korea without even informing the family. Mi Gook is turning out to be not nearly as magical in its reality as in its mythic illusion.
