Book Review

What will you do if you hear a piece of negative news from your friend? How will you react? What emotion will you express? Nowadays, people are more indifferent towards sad stories. They tend to skip the topic when people hear negative news. Instead, they love positive and successful stories.

Graham Bodie, a professor of integrated marketing communication, told us that people crave to be understood while sharing their stories. We seek true friends, not business partners. We feel lonely because we cannot share our sorrow with others or we are misunderstood.

How much time do you spend listening to others? When we talk, what exactly are we listening to? Are we listening to their feelings or their stories? The author of "You're Not Listening" interviewed many experts, collected their research, and turned it into a book. It's a nice book and I even get many ideas from it. Here are several pieces of stories from the book.

A few months ago, I joined a study group and we had a weekly meeting for book discussion. The book we read was called “Stolen Focus.” After reading it, I think the book is trying to tell us how we should focus on the present. Nowadays, we are easily distributed by external stimuli. It will prevent us from achieving our task. The noise can break our concentration. Even if it is supposedly helpful noise, like our friends and family telling us what to do, it's not useful.

Why do we always blame others? Why do we always compare ourselves to others? Maybe we are so greedy that it causes us to be stressed out. Getting more isn't always a good thing. How can we do the right things with our limited time and resources? It's the key point we need to think about. For example, reading news from the Internet is definitely beneficial for people. However, too much information might lead you to procrastinate. 

恰逢母親節，不知不覺地讀完了這本2021年被Goodreads讀者票選為年度最佳回憶錄的書籍《沒有媽媽的超市》（Crying in H Mart）。選擇閱讀這本書的原因是因為在網絡上得知它即將被改編為真人電影。為了彌補之前沒有先讀過原著的《Call Me By Your Name》、《Normal People》等我非常喜愛的電影和劇集，我決定這一次要優先閱讀這本書。雖然我不是「Japanese Breakfast」的樂迷，也不是Will Sharpe的粉絲，但我是一位亞洲人，一個有亞洲媽媽的人。

擁有混血兒的身分似乎並不像人們想像的那樣特別，作者論證了這一點，她在上學時裝扮成洋鬼子，模仿他們的說話方式，以掩飾自己的黃皮膚。即使她擁有二分之一的韓國血統，她除了「안녕하세요」 之外，幾乎不會說別的韓語，碰上媽媽與自己的阿姨在聊天，只能當個旁聽，遑論幫爸爸翻譯。作者從來未強調自己「雙重身分」所得到的好處，相反，當她渴望說出一口流利的韓語時，她後悔當年沒有好好地聽媽媽說，努力學習韓文。我們經常被身邊的混血兒吸引，總覺得「亞洲人」的血統不夠特殊、不夠尊貴，非得添加一點白、一點黑、一點啡，才感覺自己脫穎而出。即使得不到先天的血緣與基因，許多人還是會透過遷移的方法嘗試「融入」其他文化。歸根究底，是「亞洲人」的基因難以承受還是「華人」的身分難以共鳴？只有自己心知肚明。