Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Poets don’t even know when they’re lying. They’re just trying to remember their dreams. They’re trying to remember six thousand years of history and all the versions of all the stories ever told.”

Daniel is this book’s “poet,” and he will later discover that his opening story about his Baba Haji and the slaying of the bull is much different than he remembers. This opening to the novel also emphasizes the great role that stories will play and how they are a way for Daniel to remember his past and his family’s past, with all its triumphs and tragedies.

“When I tell this whole story, I don’t tell anyone about that part. I was just a little kid back then. Still. They’ll think I want their pity. In America they distrust unhappy people. But I don’t want pity. I just wonder if they’ve had that feeling too. The one where you realize it’s your fault that something beautiful is dead. And you know you weren’t worth the trouble.”

Daniel struggles with feeling “worthy” throughout the novel, hitting a point near its end where he feels that he has wasted his readers’ time. He wants to feel a connection and wants so badly to be valued and loved. Eventually, he learns that it isn’t his fault that the bull is dead, as he believes in this story, and, to some extent, that relieves him of some pain.

“If we can just rise to the challenge of communication—here in the parlor of your mind—we can maybe reach across time and space and every ordinary thing to see so deep into the heart of each other that you might agree that I am like you.”

Daniel wishes so badly to connect with his reader, Mrs. Miller–and the audience by extension–that he weaves stories like Scheherazade, wishing to show that he is not so different, that he experiences the whole range of emotions and that he has had a difficult life. This sums up his purpose and relates to the theme of the experience of immigrant children and attempts to connect.