Summer Reading
Looking back, I spent a lot of time in the library growing up. Well, libraries. Growing up poor in the war-torn streets of Seoul, my mom had found solace in the written page and she wanted to pass the value of reading along to her kids. As such, some of my earliest memories are in the Arlington Public Library surrounded by the comforting smell of musty old volumes stacked in labyrinthine shelves. By first grade, I could actually read pretty well relative to age and by third grade my mom and I would start to have these reading contests. We would cycle between choosing a book and seeing who could finish it first and then have a conversation about it over tea like some sort of two-person book club. The real kicker is that if I won, my mom would treat me to comic books, trading cards, and pogs. My mom worked over forty hours a week and did the heavy lifting when it came to the household; I always won. I know now that she never intended to win but really just to get me to read. The flip