This is KUOW's book club, and we just read through the first half of Putsata Reang's memoir "Ma and Me." I'm your guide, Katie Campbell. Let's get into it. here's a refrain in "Ma and Me" that is ...

In public you explain quite unabashedly that you’re a pacifist, but the reason for this is that, in private, you’re not. I don’t like the language of pacifism at all, because it’s so passive.