The Gangster We Are All Looking For

Although the Girl deploys all of the five senses to bring her story to life, sound is by far the most prominent. The use of sound adds richness and texture to the story and even adds some light humor to an otherwise very dark and serious story. Some examples include the boys in the pool making noises like a cartoon character or the Girl mimicking a store owner’s words and comparing herself to a parrot. And in particular, the repetition of sounds—or certain phrases—has symbolic meaning in the novel. Take the title of the first chapter: “suh-top!” This phase is repeated throughout the chapter and has multiple meanings. The first and most obvious is that Ba is reading the word “stop” on a stop sign and mispronounces it as he is still learning how to articulate words in English. The spelling out of this sound the way Ba pronounces it highlights for the reader the challenge of a new immigrant struggling to adjust to a foreign tongue. But we also hear Ba say it to the Girl after she has thrown the butterfly encased in glass and is spinning around, which is a more serious situation than the previous one with the stop sign. The use of the same word in different contexts shows how language takes on additional meaning through repetition. Sound intertwines with names as well in this novel, so when the mother enunciates her husband’s name “Anh Minh,” we understand better the love she bears for her husband.

By extension, silence also serves an important function in this novel. Growing up in a chaotic home where she often witnesses angry fights, the Girl escapes to the bathtub to drown out her parents’ voices. But she dreads the quiet that comes with the silence underwater. The “quiet” happens in both the Kissing Box and when her parents fight, and it unsettles her: “And when the awful quiet came, I’d break it by filling the tub with more and more water” (67). The quiet may disturb the Girl because it reminds her of the silence around her brother’s death. In this novel, much is revealed through what is unsaid. Numerous times, the Girl tries to bring up her brother, only for her mother to shut her down or fail to answer questions. This indicates that there is an unspoken rule among the parents not to talk about the Girl’s brother, and this is a rule the Girl breaks in her natural desire to understand what happened to her brother. Silence is a coping tactic for Ma to deal with the trauma of losing her son. Silence is also a coping tactic for her father to not talk about the war or the past and instead bury his pain. And eventually, the Girl becomes silent and stops talking to her parents, choosing to run away. 

From the very moment Ba and the Girl are laughed at by U.S. soldiers on a naval ship, the author implies a vast separation between native-born Americans and Vietnamese refugees. This separation manifests in the form of American imperialism, which tears apart Vietnam in the war and then laughs at refugees who choose to flee for America. It manifests in the power structures that privilege white men like Mel and leave the Vietnamese refugees at the mercy of a system that makes it difficult for lower-income immigrants to achieve the American dream of success. It also manifests in the structural inequalities and class divides in America, which lead the Vietnamese immigrants to live in poorly-maintained neighborhoods while the Girl’s wealthier classmates live in a nicer neighborhood with well-maintained lawns. And it manifests in the everyday racism in the novel, such as the boys at the Girl’s school calling all the Asian children “Yang” (89).

The family is perceived as foreign or “other,” which the Girl picks up on even at a young age, because she is isolated as the only Vietnamese girl in a classroom of students that know little about her culture. This divide between immigrant and non-immigrant is even expressed in the language of the novel, when the word “American” is used to connote non-Vietnamese—and likely white, native-born—residents of the U.S. By contrast, the Vietnamese refugees are referred to as “Vietnamese.” This reflects how their fellow countrymen still do not see the refugees as fully American, and perhaps how the refugees themselves struggle to feel fully American in a society that doesn’t understand them—and in some cases actively resents and exploits them. We see this unfold when the new building owner in Linda Vista assumes his mostly lower-income, Asian tenants will not be able to afford the rent and evicts them, knowing that they have little means to defend themselves.

Ma and Ba seem to have a tacit understanding that to fit in—or belong—in America means adopting to modes of whiteness and mainstream norms. Mel emphasizes this unintentionally when he urges the uncles to paint in the color white because “It’s clean” (10). Whiteness is the norm in America. This is understood when the Mexican bakery owner learns English on cassette tapes and serves French pastries for an American clientele instead of desserts from his native country. It is understood in the restaurant where Ma works, which overcharges for pho to attract white Americans. It is also understood when Ba names his gardening service “Tom’s Professional Gardening Service” and has his daughter—who speaks English better than he does—serve as his secretary.

Despite the family’s efforts, they still are standing on the fringes of a mainstream society that will not fully welcome or embrace them. The Girl acknowledges this reality when she says people look down upon her neighbors and the peeling paint on their houses: “Some people think it’s dirty but they don’t know much about us” (90). However, she challenges the assumptions of the dominant white society by presenting her Vietnamese community with pride: “They haven’t seen our gardens full of lemongrass, mint, cilantro and basil […] How about the Great Wall of China that snakes like a river from the top of the steep hill off Crandall Drive to the slightly curving bottom? Who has seen this?” (90).

One of the most interesting literary devices in the novel is the author’s choice to shift back and forth between geographic locations, time zones, and characters. Instead of proceeding in a linear fashion from the Girl’s childhood in Vietnam to her returning as an adult to Vietnam, the novel starts and stops between different memories in America and different memories in Vietnam at different points in time. In doing this, the author creates a disorienting narrative that leads the reader to question what is real and what is imagined. But eventually, these multiple timelines mash up to a complete whole, leaving readers with perhaps a more satisfying reading experience than if they had proceeded straight from the beginning of the Girl’s life to the present day. For example, the author does not talk often about ages—except when she mentions that the Girl leaves home at age 16—leading the reader to infer that the Girl is becoming an adolescent through mentions of puberty and a growing adult awareness of her parents’ problems. She also builds suspense to the novel’s major reveal: the Girl’s brother died in Vietnam, and his death still haunts the family to this day.

This narrative tactic also leads the reader to question the very nature of how we process time and how things do—or do not change—as the years go on. For example, when the Girl witnesses her father crying at the refugee camp in Singapore and she finally realizes that the situation is very bad, she sees a cloud cover the moon. She then perceives that time has come to a standstill before it continues “inexplicably, incredibly” (111). Time is momentarily frozen in this moment of trauma, but the Girl is able to move forward, and time progresses, showing that no matter our circumstances, time trudges on. It trudges on as the Girl flees home and as months turn into seasons, which turn into years. The exact amount of time that has passed is left uncertain because it doesn’t really matter. All we need to know is that a large amount of time has passed, and yet Ba still suffers from his PTSD and the Girl still suffers from intergenerational trauma due to her family’s turbulent situation.

Ultimately, the Girl utters this line near the end of the novel: “I don’t know how time moves or which of our sorrows or our desires it is able to wash away. I return after twenty years still expecting my brother to step out of the sea” (154). Counter to the common saying that time heals all wounds, the Girl knows that memories or traumas can actually become strengthened with time if they are not dealt with properly. This happens when her family fails to properly explain to her the nature of her brother’s death, which torments her into her adult years. It happens when Ba fails to find healthy coping methods for dealing with PTSD and instead takes it out on his family.  

The novel also moves between different characters at various stages in their lives. This allows us to see progression and character development not only from the child version of the Girl to the adult version, but also from Ba as a young soldier to an older man struggling with PTSD. We also see Ma transition to a young woman in love and reeling with her husband away at war to a middle-aged woman frustrated with her husband’s inability to change. It also affords the reader multiple perspectives on the same issue. We see how Ba’s drunken violence impacts himself, Ma, and the Girl, because we hear from all three perspectives. Readers see not only how the Girl delights in seeing the boys in the red apartment jump from the balcony into the pool, but also how the landlord resents his mostly Vietnamese tenants for their children’s behavior and thinks of them in offensive stereotypes. People can have different memories of the same events, as shown effectively through these varying points of view in the novel.