The Remarkable Lives of the Women Around Me

As a father, a brother, an uncle and a son, my life has been one long, adventurous movie filled with heroines with superpowers performing amazing feats.

My first memory of such a heroine is of my babysitter. Poverty and war forced us to eat every last grain of rice, even the hard crust left in the pot at the end of the day. My babysitter, an eight-year-old girl, had the ingenuity to coax bratty twoyear-old me into eating and even looking forward to these “rice cakes.” She grew up to own one of the most successful Asian grocery stores in all of Wisconsin. Her name is Song Yang.

When my 12-year-old eyes widened upon seeing the name-brand shirt all the other kids were wearing, this next amazing woman paid for it without hesitation. I told her not to because I knew it would