The Refugees

“You died too,” he said. “You just don’t know it.”

The narrator reaches an epiphany about the trauma she endured when she was sexually assaulted by a pirate. Trauma has frozen her in time; she has metaphorically died. This implies that she is a ghost like her brother, even though she is still alive.

“Some­times this is how stories come to me, through her. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ she would say, once, twice, or per­haps three times. More of­ten, though, I go hunt­ing for the ghosts, some­thing I can do with­out ever leav­ing home. As they haunt our coun­try, so do we haunt theirs. They are pal­lid crea­tures, more fright­ened of us than we are of them. That is why we see these shades so rarely, and why we must seek them out.”

The narrator’s attitude toward ghosts at the end of the story allows her to feel more empathetic about her own past. The fact that she can hunt for ghosts without leaving home means she is mining her past for the traumatic experiences that make up these ghost stories. By telling these stories, she can “exorcize” the “ghosts” she held onto in her years of silence.

“Mar­cus ap­peared to be in his mid-twenties, only a few years old­er than Liem, who’d turned eight­een over the sum­mer. If Mar­cus’s smile seemed a lit­tle disdain­ful as he of­fered his hand, Liem could hard­ly blame him, for com­pared with Mar­cus, he was sore­ly lack­ing in just about eve­ry re­gard. Even the yellowness of his teeth was more ev­i­dent next to the white­ness of Mar­cus’s. With body erect and head tilted back, Mar­cus had the pos­ture of some­one expect­ing an in­her­it­ance, while Liem’s sense of debt caused him to walk with eyes down­cast, as if search­ing for pen­nies.”

Liem juxtaposes himself with Marcus, who has assimilated into American culture, openly expresses his sexuality, and consequently appears to Liem as representative of everything he himself lacks. Liem’s downcast body language and “sense of debt” emphasize his status as a refugee.

“He thought he’d for­got­ten about those nights, had run away from them at last, but now he won­dered if the ev­i­dence still ex­isted in the lines of his palms. He rubbed his hands un­eas­i­ly on his jeans as they drove through a neigh­bor­hood with bustling side­walks, traf­ficked by peo­ple of sev­er­al col­ors. They were most­ly whites and Mex­i­cans, along with some blacks and a scat­ter­ing of Chi­nese, none of whom looked twice at the signs in the store win­dows or the graffiti on the walls, writ­ten in a lan­guage he’d nev­er seen be­fore: PELUQUERíA, CHUY ES MARICóN, RITMO LA­TI­NO, DENTISTA, IGLESIA DE CRISTO, VIVA LA RAZA!”

Liem was forced to repress his homosexuality in conservative Vietnam. Now that he is exposed to Marcus and Parrish living open lives out of the closet, he is forced to confront his own queer identity.

“Rest­less, he stood up and walked over to the bay win­dow over­look­ing the street and the side­walks, emp­ty this late in the eve­ning. The light in the room had turned the win­dow into a mir­ror, su­per­im­pos­ing his like­ness over the landscape out­side. When he raised his hand, his re­flec­tion raised its hand, and when he touched his face, the re­flec­tion did the same, and when he traced the curve of his cheek and the line of his jaw, so, too, did the mir­ror im­age. Why, then, did he not rec­og­nize him­self? And why did he see right through him­self to the dark street out­side?”

Reading his father’s letter right after having sex with Marcus for the first time causes Liem to have an identity crisis. This is symbolized by his reflection, which shows how he can no longer recognize himself in the new social context he lives in.

“My moth­er and fa­ther rare­ly left their posts, the cash reg­is­ters flank­ing the en­trance of the New Sai­gon. Cus­tom­ers al­ways crowd­ed the mar­ket, one of the few places in San Jose where the Vi­et­nam­ese could buy the sta­ples and spices of home, jas­mine rice and star an­ise, fish sauce and fire-en­gine-red chilies. Peo­ple haggled end­less­ly with my moth­er over eve­ry­thing, be­gin­ning with the rock sug­ar, which I pre­tend­ed was yel­low kryptonite, and end­ing with the varieties of meat in the freez­er, from pork chops and cat­fish with a glint of light in their eyes to shoe­strings of chewy tripe and pack­ets of chick­en hearts, small and ten­der as but­ton mush­rooms.”

The narrator’s parents’ store is emblematic of the way diasporic communities try to establish a sense of home in foreign lands. Stores like this become a way for these communities to remain connected with their cultures. The narrator’s comparison of rock sugar to kryptonite shows his connection as a Generation 1.5 adolescent to American culture.

“‘But they be­lieve in tak­ing oth­er peo­ple’s mon­ey,’ my fa­ther said. He spoke often of his auto parts store, which ac­cord­ing to his broth­ers no long­er had any parts to sell un­der Com­mun­ist own­er­ship. We had lived above the store, and some­times I won­dered if a Com­mun­ist child was sleep­ing in my bed, and if so, what kinds of books a Red read, and what kind of mov­ies he saw. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca was out of the ques­tion, but he must have seen Luke Skywalker cross­ing light sa­bers with Darth Vader. I had seen Star Wars a doz­en times on videotape, and if an­y­one was so de­prived as to have not watched it even once, then the coun­try in which he lived sure­ly needed a rev­o­lu­tion. But my moth­er would not have agreed. She wrapped a pa­per band around the twenties and said, ‘I hate the Com­mun­ists as much as Mrs. Hoa, but she’s fight­ing a war that can’t be won. I’m not throw­ing away my mon­ey on a lost cause.’”

The narrator is raised in the cultural zeitgeist of 1980s America, which was almost cartoonishly anti-communist and framed the USSR as supervillains like Darth Vader. His parents’ hatred of the communists, by contrast, is rooted in the upheaval of their lives that the Vietnamese communist revolution caused. However, unlike Mrs. Hoa, they are able to move beyond the war.

“Mrs. Hoa’s face had turned as white as her out­fit, and red lip­stick smeared her ochre teeth, ba­red in fury. She glared at the cus­tom­ers and said, ‘You heard her, didn’t you? She doesn’t sup­port the cause. If she’s not a Com­mun­ist, she’s just as bad as a Com­mun­ist. If you shop here, you’re help­ing Com­mun­ists.’”

Mrs. Hoa’s anti-communist zeal causes her to view her charity as a purity test: If a member of the community does not contribute, it is tantamount to being a communist sympathizer. This could be damaging to the narrator’s parents’ business, which already runs on a very narrow profit margin.

“When Mrs. Hoa looked at the cash, I thought she might de­mand the five hun­dred dol­lars she’d asked for, but she swept up the bills, folded them, and dropped them into the box on her lap. As she and my moth­er stared at each oth­er af­ter that, I thought about how years ago my moth­er had bribed a general’s wife with an ounce of gold, buy­ing my fa­ther’s free­dom from the draft.”

The narrator cannot help but contrast his father’s wartime experience with that of Mrs. Hoa’s husband and son. His father was able to avoid the draft altogether, while Mr. Hoa and the couple’s sons are dead, though Mrs. Hoa is in denial. For Mrs. Hoa and many who suffered traumatic losses during the war, the war years never ended.

“For his part, Ar­thur had no idea. He had trou­ble dis­tin­guish­ing one nationali­ty of Asian names from an­oth­er. He was also af­flicted with a re­lat­ed, and very com­mon, astig­ma­tism where­in all Asians ap­peared the same. On first meet­ing the Parks, he had not thought that they were Ko­re­an, or even Japanese. In­stead, he had fall­en back on his de­fault choice when con­fronted with a per­plex­ing prob­lem of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion re­gard­ing an Asian. ‘There are a lot of Chi­nese around here,’ Ar­thur said. ‘I’d bet this guy is Chi­nese.’”

Many of the stories in The Refugees take place in highly multicultural regions of Southern California, particularly in the Los Angeles and Orange County regions which have large Hispanic and Asian populations. Arthur, a Hispanic man, automatically assumes most Asian people he encounters are Chinese—a common, ignorant assumption by non-Asian Americans.

“The weight of Ar­thur’s na­ïve­té pressed him deeper into the couch as he recalled Ru­bén, Gus­ta­vo, Vi­cen­te, Al­ber­to, and all those oth­er em­ploy­ees of Arellano & Sons of whom his broth­er asked no ques­tions, so long as they produced So­cial Se­cu­ri­ty cards and driv­er’s li­censes, ei­ther real or faked well enough to be mis­tak­en for real. Those phan­tom identities were easy to ob­tain, as Lou­is had shown Ar­thur one day, fan­ning out on the cof­fee ta­ble five driv­er’s li­censes, each one with Lou­is’s pic­ture but a dif­fer­ent name. Ar­thur bur­ied his face in his hands as he im­ag­ined a raid on Arellano & Sons, lead­ing to ar­rests and de­por­ta­tions, with dis­grace for Martín and def­a­ma­tion of Big Art’s good name.”

Arthur finally realizes the impact his hapless behavior has on those around him when Louis threatens to report Martin for employing undocumented immigrants. Louis lives in a world of counterfeit and forgery, from fake designer clothes to his fake identity as the son of Men Vu. The Arellano family landscaping business, which like many such businesses in America relies on the exploited labor of undocumented people, is something that Louis filed away as potential leverage against Arthur.

“Mrs. Khanh could tell that the sub­ject of the paint­ing was a wom­an, but one whose left eye was green and whose right eye was red, which was no­where near as odd as the way the art­ist had flat­tened her arms and tor­so, leav­ing her to look less like a real per­son and more like a child’s pa­per doll, cut out and past­ed to a three-di­men­sion­al chair.”

The Picasso replica that Vinh brings back from Vietnam symbolizes the way that Mrs. Khanh’s control over her life begins to slip as her husband’s memory worsens. The flattened, cubist woman’s appearance is meant to stimulate Professor Khanh’s memory; instead, the woman’s mismatched eyes symbolize his misrecognizing his wife for Yen, whoever she is.

“Vinh sounded noth­ing like the boy who, upon reach­ing his teen­age years, had turned into some­one his par­ents no long­er knew, sneak­ing out of the house at night to be with his girl­friend, an Amer­i­can who paint­ed her nails black and dyed her hair pur­ple. The pro­fes­sor rem­e­died the sit­u­a­tion by nail­ing the win­dows shut, a prob­lem Vinh solved by elop­ing soon af­ter his grad­u­a­tion from Bolsa Gran­de High. ‘I’m in love,’ Vinh had screamed to his moth­er over the phone from Las Ve­gas. ‘But you wouldn’t know an­y­thing about that, would you?’”

Vinh, or Kevin, as he likes to be called, was a rebellious child who grew into a responsible, if nontraditional (by Vietnamese cultural standards) son. He is the main representative of Generation 1.5 in the Khanh family. As an adult, his rebellion is mostly expressed in his insistence that his mother retire despite her wishes.

“In the end there was no choice. On her last day at work, her fel­low li­brar­i­ans threw her a sur­prise fare­well par­ty, com­plete with cake and a wrapped gift box that held a set of trav­el guides for the va­ca­tions they knew she’d al­ways wanted to take. She fondled the guides for a while, riffling through their pages, and when she al­most wept, her fel­low li­brar­i­ans thought she was be­ing sentimen­tal. Driv­ing home with the box of guides in the backseat, next to a pack­age of adult di­a­pers she’d pick­ed up from Sav-On’s that morn­ing, she fought to con­trol the sense that ever so slow­ly the book of her life was be­ing closed.”

The juxtaposition of the travel guides and the adult diapers represents the tragic digression Mrs. Khanh’s life has taken. Rather than the mobile retirement of world travel she and Professor Khanh envisioned, she will have to endure static seclusion, taking care of her husband as his condition deteriorates.

“‘Ha­ven’t they seen tour­ists be­fore?’ Car­ver said.

‘Not like us.’ Claire un­sealed a pack of cig­a­rettes and lit one. ‘We’re a mixed bag.’

‘They don’t know what to make of us?’ Michiko said.

‘I’m used to it, but you’re not.’

‘Try be­ing a Jap­a­nese wife at a Mich­i­gan air base in 1973.’

‘Tou­ché,’ Claire said.

‘Try be­ing a black man in Ja­pan,’ Car­ver said. ‘Or Thai­land.’

‘But you could al­ways go home,’ Claire said. ‘There was al­ways a place for you some­where. But there’s nev­er been a place for me.’”

This exchange gives insight into the Carver family’s identity and past; each of them faced their own obstacles as people of color in America, and these issues are highlighted in Vietnam, where they are all foreign. Claire, in particular, felt out of place growing up as a half-Black, half-Asian woman in the US.

“Al­most eve­ry­thing looked more beau­ti­ful from a dis­tance, the earth becoming ever more per­fect as one as­cended and came clos­er to see­ing the world from God’s eyes, man’s hov­els and pal­aces dis­ap­pear­ing, the peaks and val­leys of ge­og­ra­phy fad­ing to be­come strokes of a paint­brush on a di­vine sphere. But seen up close, from this height, the coun­try­side was so poor that the pov­er­ty was nei­ther pic­tur­esque nor pas­to­ral: tin-roofed shacks with dirt floors, a man pull­ing up the leg of his shorts to uri­nate on a wall, la­bor­ers wearing slip­pers as they ushed wheel­bar­rows full of bricks. When Car­ver rolled down his win­dow, he dis­cov­ered that the smell of the coun­try­side was just as un­pleas­ant, the air thick with blasts of soot from pass­ing trucks, the rot of buffalo dung, the fer­men­ta­tion of the lo­cal cui­sine that he found briny and nause­at­ing. All of the sights, sounds, and smells de­pressed Car­ver, along with Claire’s and Michiko’s si­lent treat­ment of him, un­re­lent­ing since yes­ter­day.”

As a former B-52 bomber pilot for the Air Force, Carver still feels most at home in the sky. This is symbolic of him feeling “above” any given situation, exemplified by his coldness to Khoi, his alternating antagonism and aloofness with Claire, and his ambivalence toward his experience as a prisoner of war and return to Vietnam.

“Claire’s mind wasn’t com­plex enough to grasp the need to strike the en­e­my from on high in or­der to save fel­low Amer­i­cans below much less un­der­stand his be­lief that God was his co­pi­lot. She was his com­plete op­po­site, join­ing Am­nes­ty In­ter­na­tion­al in high school and march­ing against De­sert Storm at Vassar, as if pro­test­ing made any dif­fer­ence at all. If it did, the help it of­fered was to the en­e­my. Al­though she em­pa­thized with vast mass­es of peo­ple she had nev­er met, to­tal stran­gers who re­garded her as a stran­ger and who would kill her with­out hes­i­ta­tion giv­en the chance, she did not ex­tend any such feel­ing to him.”

What Carver views as unfair in Claire’s attitude toward him is rooted in him keeping his wartime experiences private. While Claire blames her father for his part in the war, Carver was following orders; he believed in the war effort as it was sold to him, and he believed he was protecting his fellow Americans. Both of them miss key nuances of war: Carver ignores the civilian perspective, while Claire ignores the soldiers’ experiences

“‘I’m not an­gry and bit­ter. What am I an­gry about? What am I bit­ter about? That I’m be­ing lec­tured to by a kid who thinks he’s go­ing to save the world with a tin can ro­bot? That I have a daugh­ter who thinks she’s Vi­et­nam­ese?’

‘I said I have a Vi­et­nam­ese soul. It’s a fig­ure of speech. It’s an ex­pres­sion. It means I think I’ve found some­place where I can do some good and make up for some of the things you’ve done.’

‘I’ve done? What have I done?’

‘You bom­bed this place. Have you ever thought about how many peo­ple you killed? The thou­sands? The tens of thou­sands?’”

Carver and Claire’s differences come to a head in this exchange. This scene implies that Claire has always carried a degree of guilt for her father’s involvement in the Vietnam War. It also reveals how little Carver has thought of the lives he has taken—though he may have repressed these thoughts as a coping mechanism for trauma or PTSD.

“‘Sam’s a good wom­an.’ My fa­ther reached over and pressed the horn once, twice, and a third time. ‘You should nev­er have let her go.’

As if to prove how lit­tle of a man I was, I started cry­ing.”

Mr. P is a dominating, hypermasculine figure whose domineering influence makes Thomas a secondary character in his own life. Even in his thirties, Thomas cannot live up to his father’s ideals except briefly in his marriage with Sam, which Mr. P approved of. Unwilling to have children with Sam, Thomas further emasculates himself by offering to be a father to her unborn child that she conceived with another man.

“‘You wouldn’t know right from wrong.’ There was no trace of an­ger in his voice. ‘The only way a man knows right from wrong is when he makes a choice.’”

Mr. P highlights Thomas’s biggest negative trait: his indecisiveness. Mr. P may have been unfaithful to Sam’s mother and may have just vandalized Sam’s car, but he owns his actions; he is decisive. To Mr. P, that is the most important factor in being considered a man.

“Her first glimpse of Viv­i­en at the air­port only con­firmed the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of such a mov­ie star’s name for the young wom­an who paused at the ter­mi­nal’s glass gates, her eyes hid­den be­hind enor­mous sun­glass­es, her lips slight­ly part­ed in a glossy pout, push­ing a cart load­ed with her own weight in crim­son lug­gage. As she jumped and waved to get Viv­i­en’s at­ten­tion, Phuong was thrilled to see that her sis­ter bore utterly no re­sem­blance to the throngs of lo­cal peo­ple wait­ing out­side to greet the ar­ri­vals, hun­dreds of or­di­nary folk wear­ing drab clothes and fan­ning them­selves un­der the sun.”

Before Vivien’s big revelation at the climax of the story, she represents the allure of affluence the West holds for Phuong and many who desire to emigrate. Vivien is an idealized version of Phuong in Phuong’s mind; she represents the potential Phuong cannot achieve.

“Un­like her sis­ter, Phuong was not smil­ing. Their fa­ther had forced her to wear an ao dai for Viv­i­en’s de­par­ture, and she looked se­ri­ous and grim in its silk con­fines. Hers was the ex­pres­sion that old­er peo­ple of an ear­li­er gen­er­a­tion usu­al­ly adopt­ed as they stood be­fore the cam­era, pic­ture-tak­ing a rare and cer­e­mo­ni­ous oc­ca­sion re­served for wed­dings and fu­ner­als. The pho­to­graph flared when she touched it with fire, Viv­i­en’s fea­tures melt­ing be­fore her own, their faces van­ish­ing in flame. Af­ter the last em­bers from this pho­to­graph and the oth­ers had died, Phuong rose and scat­tered their ash­es.”

Phuong burns the photographs Vivien took while she visited the family as a symbolic act: she is destroying the image she held of her half-sister, and, consequently, the diminished self-image she held by comparing herself to Vivien. The final picture she burns roots her in her Vietnamese context. By destroying it, she opens the possibility that she can leave and achieve her dreams beyond her home country.

“I came to un­der­stand that in the United States, land of the fa­bled Amer­i­can dream, it is un-Amer­i­can to be a ref­u­gee. The ref­u­gee embodies fear, fail­ure, and flight. Amer­i­cans of all kinds be­lieve that it is im­pos­si­ble for an Amer­i­can to be­come a ref­u­gee, al­though it is pos­si­ble for ref­u­gees to be­come Amer­i­cans and in that way be el­e­vat­ed one step clos­er to heav­en.”

Refugees represent the inherent precarity of life to citizens of first-world countries. Nguyen recognizes this precarity from his own refugee experience, and he extrapolates this to the fear and hatred Americans exhibit toward refugees and other such disadvantaged classes.