Henry Holt's Reviews > Off the Books

“The mechanics weren’t permitted to smoke weed or anything else, but the old man was like the Olympic flame. He’d stay lit till the end.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“Going karura mean ride service off the books.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“Soon after, Ling Ling began introducing Mei to family: cousins, sisters, aunts, all of whom kept similarly erratic schedules, till Mei finally understood that this was not a biological family but a family of sex workers.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“She would hate it, but she’s saving her hate for the Three I’s. Iowa, Illinois, Indiana.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“Uyghur birth rates plummeted by nearly forty-five percent in a year. One year. That’s genocide, defined by the U.N. ‘Never again,’ we said after the Holocaust. But it’s happening now.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“All love is selfish, but this kind of love is more selfish than the lover. It’ll crack you before you can crack it, and even then, you’ll thank it on your knees. You know?”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“When the preacher spoke of loss, Mei watched her mother’s impassive face and wondered whether she even felt Daddy’s absence. On July fifth, she contacted Dartmouth and withdrew from school. Certainly, Mama would feel that.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“On the Fourth, he’d been cowardly. And this time he hadn’t missed.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“They took her; sent Anna to the state-run school.’ In the near-dark, Henry’s eyes narrow. ‘The schools prevent Uyghur kids from practicing Islam. Change their language, enforcing standard Mandarin. Make them eat pork. It’s Basic Genocide 101.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“Was the decline of journalistic ethics an inevitable result of capitalism?”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“There’s a spot near here on the I-80, Mei knows, where the road appears to lead up into the sky. But each time she’s crossed the state, searching for the optical illusion, she’s missed it. And she wonders whether perhaps the spot is actually nicknamed the Highway to Heaven because this stretch of the road is so mesmerizingly straight, it lures people to sleep, causing accidents.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“There is something about a child’s soft skin that’s almost tragic, perfection inviting rumination.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books

“She thinks of the freedoms he’s guaranteed here and is impressed and heartbroken that it took Aynur’s death, the death of hope, for him to choose those freedoms.”
― Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Off the Books