lê thị diễm thúy

Sharp, elegaic and poetic. The Gangster We Are All Looking For is structured as a series of vignettes that follow the life of Vietnamese family in the United States, with some flashbacks to Vietnam. It's neither linear nor coherent in the conventional narrative sense, and that usually isn't my taste but I did enjoy how lê fleshes out and compresses an entire life, a feeling, a moment within a short paragraph. The images are striking and filled with so much sorrow and displacement. A lot of show more them hover on the edge of fantastical and imaginary, so as to mimic a diasporic child's perspective of the world - with newness, strangeness and fleeting beauty. It's worth a reread some time later.

— "I grew up studying my father so closely as to suggest I was certain I saw my future in him. I would build and break things with my hands. I would answer to names not my own and be ordered around like a child. Shame would crush me. I would turn away from the people I loved. I would regard with suspicion the bare shoulders of a woman I desired."

— "My father mumbled in response to a threat to kill us all with one shot. I lay in bed and pictured the lonely bullet threading its way through the entire apartment building, lifting each of us out of bed and drawing us closer in our sleep. I imagined our waking the next morning to find ourselves each pierced at the very center, our bodies pulled tightly together and suspended against the blue sky, like a string of fish Ba hoists high from one end." show less

A moving and somewhat depressing story about home, cultural identity, assimilation, and cultural values. A young girl and her father come to the United States as one of many Vietnamese "boat people" in the 1970s. Her mother joins them later and the family plods from apartment to apartment trying, it seems, constantly to start a life in this foreign place. The southern California in which the family finds itself is glossy and bright, but shallow and meaningless. And the memories of home show more become increasingly bittersweet. show less

Plot seekers won find it here. You will find short pieces of beautiful poetic prose and devastating accounts of family pain. My favorite piece is 'Palm.'

Reading this book was for an English class, and I'm very glad for it, as I doubt I would have come across it otherwise.

I've read a handful of books about Vietnamese people living in America after the war, my favorite being Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham. This book is focused more on the child's view of the story, specifically the relationship between the narrator and her father, who she refers to as Ba. In the first part of the book Ba is a sort of protector as she struggles to show more understand American life and customs, while in the rest his happiness deteriorates and he begins drinking heavily. The prose is delightful and simple, filled with the type of wise words one comes to expect when reading something written by, or from the point of view of, children. A child's voice brings a profound sense of innocence and double meaning to each sentence, phrase, and word.

The style of this book also reminded me of Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street but focusing on darker situations and feelings. Only 158 pages of memorable prose but I might have liked it better if it were longer. It feels like most all of the punchlines of each story were vague and full of hints, sometimes it would be nice if they were elaborated upon. show less