I first encountered Ken Liu as the translator two of the three volumes of The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, but he’s a renowned author aside from that work. ‘The Paper Menagerie’ is the story of Jack, the son of a white man from Connecticut and his mail-order bride from China. When he is a child, Jack’s mother makes him origami animals from scrap paper that come to life.
Being bullied at school, Jack begins to resent his Chinese heritage and his mother, refusing to speak the language which cuts off virtually all communication with her until she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer while he’s at college. When she dies, he digs the animals out of storage and finds a letter from her.
I won’t spoil the content of the letter. You should track down the story.
First published 2011 in Fantasy & Science Fiction, collected in The Paper Menagerie, Saga Press, 2016
A Personal Anthology 