My mother's hands are deep in Cabbage leaves, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows, as she sifts through water, salt, and vegetable. Beneath her nails are saffron flakes of red pepper powder. My mother wears an apron; under it her stomach is full and round. The apron is blue with red borders. I remember she bought it one day at Woodward’s on sale.
I sit at the kitchen table beneath a peach-painted ceiling and a chandelier with oversized plastic teardrops. Every now then I get up and walk over to the counter, peer into the yellow tub, watch, pretend to watch, and then sit down again. Across from me, the little knick-knacks my mother loves So much-ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown -- are arranged carefully upon the window sill.
My mother's hands are thin-skinned, pale, spotted and freckled with age and sun. The nails are thick, almost yellow. A few strands of hair, not quite black, fall over her forehead and her mouth is slightly open, the tip of her tongue just visible between her teeth as she lifts and mixes the cabbage leaves. "Are you paying attention?" she wants to know, and I nod at ceramic flowers, Delfts-blue miniature vases, a figurine forever windblown.
Kim chee is pickled cabbage. Friends always ask me for botfies of the stuff: Mama Kim’s special recipe, they tease. I pass this on the my mother and she grumbles and laughs, embarrassed, pleased.
My mother’s hands lle in my lap and I touch them carefully, life them like small, live animals, fit them into the plans of my own hands, turn them over and think of crab-hunting as a child and a trail of overturned, shell-encrusted sea rocks.
Once I told my mother that I would like to photograph' her hands, and she peered down at them, lifted her hands up to her face suspiciously as if seeing them for the first time. "My hands?" she asked, and I went and fetched some skin lotion from the bathroom. Her hands were too dry.
I had her sit on the couch in the living-room. The couch was floral-patterned and she sat in the centre of it, awkward, distracted. I took the pictures, head-to-toe shots, some of her hands alone. They lay limply in her lap. She held one hand with the other. She didn’t know what else to do with them. I took the pictures. Every ten minutes or so she got up and walked to the kitchen, checked the oven, the various pots. My father walked by once, and joked, "How about my hands?"
The cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember. A winter’s sun floats in through the window, plays weakly with the plastic tear-drops, falls down onto the kitchen table, onto my own hands. I suppose they will soon lock like hers.
I get up, restless, lean over the counter, try to concentrate. Every year for the last five years or so I have asked my mother to teach me how to pickle cabbage. Every year I have watched her hands, seen the aprons change, the stomach grow more round -- the cabbage leaves are washed and salted and rinsed. This much I remember.
I take the roils of film to a friend who knows something about photography. He develops them and is impressed. He sees a small Asian woman, smiling hesitantly into a camera, lost among the flowers of living-room couches. She is tired and stiff. My friend doesn’t even notice her hands. He calls the photos "real", I call them "disappointing".
The kim chee is just made so it is not quite ripe, but we eat a little of it at dinner, anyway. My father tells me his story about villagers who ran away during the war, as the bombs came down, with earthenware kim chee pots in their anus. It is favourite, not quite-ripe kim chee story.
When the winter sunlight comes through the kitchen window, tear-refracted onto my own hands. I stop writing and put down my pen. My mother asks, "What are you writing?" And I tell her that I am writing about kim chee. She laughs, "You don’t even kn
A. My mother’s hand.
B. Pickled cabbage.
C. Kim chee.
D. My mother.
Federal efforts to aid minority businesses began in the 1960’s when the Small Business Administration (SBA) began making federally guaranteed loans and government-sponsored management and technical assistance available to minority business enterprises. While this program enabled many minority entrepreneurs to form. new businesses, the results were disappointing, since managerial inexperience, unfavorable locations, and capital shortages led to high failures rates. Even 15 years after the program was implemented, minority business, receipts were not quite two percent of the national economy’s total receipts.
Recently federal policymakers have adopted an approach intended to accelerate development of the minority business sector by moving away from directly aiding small minority enterprises and toward supporting larger, growth-oriented minority firms through intermediary companies. In this approach, large corporations participate in the development of successful and stable minority businesses by making use of government-sponsored venture capital. The capital is used by a Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company or MESBIC. The MESBIC then provides capital and guidance to minority businesses that have potential to become future suppliers or customers of the sponsoring company.
MESBIC’s are the result of the belief that providing established firms with easier access to relevant management techniques and more job-specific experience, as well as substantial amounts of capital, gives those firms a greater opportunity to develop sound business foundations than does simply making general management experience and small amounts of capital available, Further, sines potential markets for the minority business already exist through the sponsoring companies the minority businesses fane considerably less risk in terms of location. Following early financial and operating problems, sponsoring corporations began to capitalize MESBIC’s far above the legal minimum of $ 500,00 in order to generate sufficient in come and to sustain the quality of management needed. MESBIC’s are now emerging as increasingly important financing sources for minority enterprises.
Ironically, MESBIC staffs, which usually consist of Hispanic and Black professionals, tend to approach investments in minority firms more pragmatically than do many MESBIC directors, who are usually senior managers from sponsorin8 corporations. The latter often still think mainly in terms of the "social responsibility approach" and thus seem to prefer deals that are riskier and less attractive than normal investment criteria would warrant. Such differences in viewpoint have produced uneasiness among many minority staff members, who feel that minority entrepreneurs and businesses should be judged by established business considerations, These staff members believe their point of view is closer to the original philosophy of MESBIC’s and they are concerned that, unless a more prudent course is followed, MESBIC directors may revert to policies likely to recreate the disappointing results of the original SBA approach.
Which of the following does the author cite to support the conclusion that the results of the SBA program were disappointing?
A. The small number of new minority enterprises formed as a result of the program.
B. The small number of minority enterprises that took advantage of the management and technical assistance offered under the program.
C. The small percentage of nation’s business receipts earned by minority enterprises following the programs, implementation.
D. The small percentage of recipient minority enterprises that were able to repay federally guaranteed loans made under the program.