Shelf Lives

 Min Jin Lee, "Shelf Lives", New York Times Book Review,  April 18, 2021 p. 1, 20-21.

     On a day off, Uncle John went to the New York Public Library to check the classifieds.  He noticed that computer programmers had high starting salaries, so he borrowed books on programming.  the former history graduate student read library books on computer science.  Not long after, he got a job at an insurance company, then, later, I.B.M. hired him as a programmer, where he worked for most of his life.

     In 1975, Uncle John, now an I.B.M. company man sponsored his younger sister's family to immigrate from South Korea.  A year later, we came to Elmhurst, Queens, where Uncle John, his wife and their two American-born daughters lived.  I was 7.

     In our first year in America, Uncle John took my tow sisters and me to the library in Elmhurst and got us cards.   We could borrow as many books as we liked, he said.  We loaded up our metal grocery cart with its tilted black wheels and white plastic hubs.  It creaked all the way home.  

COMMENT

    This single narrative tells a complete immigrant story.  The public library is the pathway to a better job, which enables Uncle John to sponsor other family members to come to America.  In the article Min Jin Lee, reminisces about the library books she read as a child and what they taught her about "the ethos of American rugged individualism and the Korean quest for knowledge.  Based on what she learned from years of reading, she is writing a series of novels about Korean Americans, so just as it did for Uncle John, the library also provided a vocation for the author.