1.4 They met in Kang's apartment on Dwight, blocks from the university, arriving with their copies of Capital, The State and Revolution, WHat Is to be Done?

1.5 Kang opened the discussion. We're going to take this slowly and build our knowledge. What I realize is that this is a body of knowledge that has been censored out of your education, whereas to think in Marxist terms outside of America is common practice. Marxism is a way of thinking.

1.6 Ben spoke enthusiastically: For the first time I feel as if I am reading about my own condition, about the condition of my parents as workers, and I finally understand my father's alienation. Although he did not admit it here, it was the case that as Ben read, he came to passages in Marx where he could not help but to kiss the pages and to whoop and dance about his room.

1.7 Olivia rolled her eyes at what she interpreted to be an excessive emotional display and asked for clarification about the differences and similarities between the peasant and the industrial worker.

7.3 Ben asked, When did we become Asian American?

7.4 Olivia answered, What sort of question is that?

7.5 Karl interrupted. _Wait, it's not a stupid question. Nineteen sixty-six. There's a magazine article about the Japanese American model minority, a kind of American. Before that, Japanese are racially identified as Japanese -- otherwise how could they all be interned during the war? After sixty-six, we all get racially identified as hyphenated Americans.

7.6 Olivia posed, But Asian American is a political designation.

7.7 Karl answered, It's political, racial, and national. Look, you are organizing around this designation, and that's useful, but you are going to have to scrutinize it through a Marxist analysis that includes class. Hey, trust me. This is going to make or break you.

7.8 Ben asked, You mean we have to move away from race and organize based on class?

7.9 Karl shook his head. Don't think it's that easy.

9.10 Karl said, _Marx said that men make their own history but not necessarily as they please. He predicted the inevitability of the failure of the capitalist mode of production, and you yourselves can see the contradictions that make continuous acquisition of the earth's resources and the exploitation of everyone to do so a finite proposition, but when it will fail and how, that's --

9.11 Olivia inserted, Up to us.

1.1 Ben San Pablo was named after this father, Bienvenido San Pablo, Sr., a strong muscular man of broad shoulders and deep voice, a tough, bold exterior fortified nightly by the golden flame lit within an amber bottle of whiskey. There was no earthly weight that Bienvenido Senior could not lift, no woman he could not charm, no comrade from whom he did not receive respect. And yet a great weight surrounded his heart like a lead suitcase, an unattainable woman sneered blue cat eyes in his dreams, a great white father reminded him constantly of his place. Thus a great man was a cripple in his own mind, uncontrollably jealous of the woman with whom he became attached such that his paranoia and self-doubt eventually drove each of them away, and though a respected foreman at his job, he spent all his additional pay buying drinks and loaning money to his working crew to assure himself of their friendship and continued loyalty.

1.2 A man's self-worth can only be measured by himself.

7.1 When the epiphany came as it tends to near the end of one's life, Bienvenido Senior saw his dead mother in a wreath of light at the foot of his bed and, fearing for his life, followed her out of his house in Daly City, along the silent avenues, and into a grocery market, losing her somewhere among the fruits and vegetables. Standing there barefoot and stupidly in his pajamas at three in the morning, he wept into the broccoli and the cantaloupe, the memory of her toil spreading like those fields in a tarmac of blinding light.

7.2 Ben had begun bringing his mother's meals to his father, trying to arrive before his father could hit the evening bottle, and holding forth with a planned question. But the next night, his father said: I saw your grandmother last night. You don't have to worry about me. I know what I have to do now.

7.3 Bienvenido Senior went to church, made his confession, tossed his whiskey habit, and organized a plan to build a new church in his old village.

7.4 Years later, Ben Junior would travel to the Philippines to visit his father, buried next to the church he had struggled to build with his bare hands during those years of martial law. Ben lit a candle in the church and sat to contemplate the rebellious zeal of their separate passions.

8.2 Your friend is your needs answered. She is your field, which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And she is your board and your fireside. For you come to her with your hunger, and you seek her for peace.

8.3 When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "aye." And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; for without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unclaimed.

8.4 When you part from your friend, you grieve not; for that which you love most in her may be clearer in her absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

8.5 And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth; and only the unprofitable is caught.

9.1 Olivia said:

I do not offer the old smooth prizes,
but offer rough new prizes.
These are the days that must happen to us.
We shall not heap up what is called riches;
we shall scatter with lavish hand all that we earn or achieve.
However sweet the laid-up stores,
however convenient the dwellings,
we shall not remain there.
However sheltered the port,
and however calm the waters,
we shall not anchor there.
However welcome the hospitality that welcomes us,
we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
Afoot and lighthearted, take to the open road,
healthy, free, the world before us,
the long brown path before us,
leading wherever we choose.
Comrade, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money.
I give you myself before preaching or law.
Will you give me yourself?
Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

2.3 We may have to plan, said Ben, for the possibility of an insurrection in which we hold out in the I-Hotel.

2.4 You know we have our stash hidden, suggested a member. We could easily funnel it into the hotel, arm the place to the teeth. Once under attack, we could draw all of Chinatown in, set up multiple operational bases.

2.5 Olivia appeared in the doorway in the full bloom of her pregnant self, tapping her living belly as she spoke. What kind of bullshit are you talking? Have you asked the tenants? These guys'll kick you out on revolutionary asses. Have you even asked Chinatown? Ask me. I work in Chinatown.

2.6 The continued belief in the heroic individual who can change the course of history is a contradictory although romantic message to the collective cause. How many Ches will it take? Is the revolutionary dead? Who then will come forward in our time of great need?

It's not easy to get into a boat with three people you don't know and go rowing off toward your destiny. If someone said, "Hey, get into this boat, it's going to change your life," would you do it? That's the trickery of being young. You figure, what the hell. I've never done this before. You've got time. Youth's supposed to have adventures. Even when there're folks who come rowing back from that trip and tell you what could happen or even warn you to turn around, you think you'll make your own mistakes but not those. But they never tell you everything. The past is always saved in someone's ego, so the really complicated and difficult things can only be known by living them out yourself. When it's all said and done, you too will save the hardest stuff inside your knowing ego. And you won't do it out of meanness, or duplicity, or vanity, but maybe because you just forget and get tired, because you've got to be an elder with a certain distance that they call wisdom, or because they never ask you anyway.

The fifth day of the takeover would be dawning in a few hours. The feeling of excitement and purpose was palpable everywhere. How many times in your life do you feel that kind of power, the sort that unifies a people in collective pride and knowing? This time, you and your people get to choose. It's not an idle feeling, but one that you pursue in various forms, like singing the same song or cheering the same team or praying to the same spirit. A connective wave carries you to the same infinite space, and you feel more alive than you ever felt.