The Eyes Are the Best Part

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, illness, self-harm, graphic violence, death, and emotional abuse.

Ji-won is a teenage girl who lives in Los Angeles with her mother, Umma, and her little sister, Ji-hyun. As the novel opens, Umma has made fish for dinner, and the family gathers around the table. As her daughters watch in horror, Umma eats the fish’s eye, telling them that it’s the best part of the meal. Ji-won and Ji-hyun are disgusted by this and avoid eating the fish on their plates. While teasing her daughters about their reaction, Umma mentions her husband, Appa, who left the family two weeks before. Umma leaves the dinner trying to hide her emotions from her family, and Ji-won throws the remainder of the fish in the garbage.

Ji-won reveals that her mother only began eating the eyes of fish in the previous couple of weeks after Ji-won’s father left. This confirms Ji-won’s suspicion that the stress has caused her mother to lose her mind.

Ji-won recalls the days after her father left, when she and Ji-hyun listened to their mother sobbing through the walls before sleep.