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This article relates to Secondhand World
Katherine Min was born in
Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, and
graduated from Amherst College and the
Columbia School of Journalism. She
currently teaches at Plymouth State
University and the Iowa Summer Writing
Festival.
Her short stories have appeared in many
publications and have been anthologized,
most recently in The Pushcart Book of
Stories: The Best Short Stories from a
Quarter-Century of The Pushcart Prize.
"Eyelids" was listed as one of 100
distinguished stories in The Best
American Short Stories of 1997. "The
Brick" was read on National Public
Radio's Selected Shorts program in 1999.
"Courting a Monk" won a Pushcart Prize.
Did you know?
About 50% of East Asians (including Isa
in Secondhand World) are born
without a crease in their eyelids
(probably an evolutionary defense
against the extreme cold and extreme
light of the Eurasian north and/or a
useful protection against the windblown
desert dust). Isa's mother urges her to
undergo plastic surgery on her eyelids
to make her "prettier".
Plastic surgery of the eyelids is known
in the trade as
blepharoplasty. The reshaping of the
eyelid to create a crease is usually
referred to as Asian blepharoplasty or
sometimes Oriental blepharoplasty, The
result is easier to
see than describe.
According to the American Academy of
Facial, Plastic and Reconstructive
Surgery, 125,000 blepharoplasty
procedures were performed in 2000 in the
United States. The operation costs
around $2,000 in the USA but less in
many Asian countries, where it is
increasingly popular.
This "beyond the book article" relates to Secondhand World. It originally ran in November 2006 and has been updated for the February 2008 paperback edition. Go to magazine.
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