Book review
I’ve been limping through this for months. I think it doesn’t really pair well with a book on genocide and the limited amount of free time on my hands. But when your flight gets delayed five times – thank you Southwest – you get a lot of time to sit and read.
I loved this. I think it’s probably seriously underappreciated as a journey of identity (but then again Asian-American literature is generally under appreciated (-: haha I clearly don’t have strong feelings on this subject). I think it’s even better because in a way, he fails. The way Pham writes feels like it belongs in a work of fiction and made me wonder several times if I can trust that these things actually happened to him. That being said his writing is fantastic, and there’s a lot that Asian-Americans can relate to, even without being Vietnamese. Books like these tear me apart page by page and leave me feeling raw and exposed, and that’s part of their attraction.
A quick collection of quotes I couldn’t find on the Goodreads quote page for this book:
‘In this Vietnamese muck, I am too American. Too refined, too removed from my que, my birth village. The sight of my roots repulses me. And this shames me deeply.’
‘So we congregate in Little Saigons, we hide out in Chinatowns and Japantowns, blending in. We huddle together, surrounding ourselves with the material wealth of America, and wave our star-spangled banners, shouting: ‘We’re Americans. We love America.”
‘The real damning thing is the fact that there are Viet-kieu, our own brothers, skin of our skin, blood of our blood, who look better than us, more civilized, more educated, more wealthy, more genteel. Viet-kieu look kingly next to the average Vietnamese… We look like monkeys because you make us look like monkeys just by your existence.’
And for a diasphoric population and its descendants:
‘At this I am good, for I am a mover of betweens. I slip among classifications like water in cupped palms, leaving bits of myself behind. I am quick and deft, for there is no greater fear than the fear of being caught wanting to belong. I am a chameleon. And the best chameleon has no center, no truer sense of self than what he is in the instant.’
- Goodreads rating – 3.98
- REVIEW – Daeny