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Book Club: The Gangster We Are All Looking For · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Adding and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I'll never told you a protection of iHeartRadio. And I
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: guess before we get into this quick content warning, we
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: are going to be talking about death and grief things
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: like that, but nothing to in depth. Today we are
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: talking about the two thousand and three book The Gangster
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: We Are All Looking For by Vietnamese American author Leam Twee.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: It is a short, fragmented piece told by an unnamed
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: narrator who immigrated from Vietnam to America as a child.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: The locations and times jump around, largely taking place in
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Vietnam and America. The age of the narrator ranges from
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: six to twenty six, and she grapples with things like identity, war, immigration, loss,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: puberty and PTSD, her and her parents, everybody around your
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: kind of mainly then. The fragmented nature of the book
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: is meant to resemble what happens to memory during a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: traumatic event, including the repression of her brother's death. It
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is a very poetic and symbolic book. A lot of
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: people describe it as almost your more reading poetry. Here's
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: a note from the author in nineteen seventy eight, my
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: father and I left Vietnam by boat on board the
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: US Navy ship that picked us up. My father incorrectly
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: filled out the paperwork identifying me. He listed my name
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: as Twee and my date of birth as January fifteenth,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. He claims he never chose my formal name,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: and shugart the shoulders who could fault him for forgetting
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: My mother arrived two years later and informed us that
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Bab had been wrong on both counts. She corrected my
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: date of birth it was now January twelfth, nineteen seventy two,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: but insisted I keep the name Tweet. My older sister,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: the original Tweet had drowned at a refugee camp in Malaysia.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: My mother saw my father's mistake as propitious. It allowed
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a part of my older sister to come to this
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: country with us, and so I kept my sister's name
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and wore it like a borrowed garment, one in which
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: my mother crowded two daughters, one dead and one living.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: When I decided to publish under my full name in
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: the Vietnamese fashion and all in lawer case because I
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: prefer the way it runs, I knew that both Americans
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and Vietnamese may find fault with it. It is not
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: how names go in either country. Nonetheless, it felt right
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to me I had finally managed to break the name down,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: rebuild it, and reclaim it as my own. So if
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: you have read the book, then a lot of this
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: is going to sound familiar. So it's not autobiographical, but
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: it's got a lot of similarities to this story and
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it is a sman that I were discussing it off
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Mike right before. It is sort of hard to pin
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: down because it is kind of like poetry and it
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: does jump around a lot. So the plot is essentially
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: you have this narrator, a named narrator, young girl who
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: immigrates via boat from Vietnam to America, loses her brother,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: and then has these memories that stand out. As I said,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: it's supposed to represent like a traumatic or some kind
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of memory that just stands out when you look back
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason. And it's exploring that and exploring her
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: trying to grapple with the PTSD and her father's PTSD,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: her mother's PTSD and figure things out and just having
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of questions and a lot of a lot
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of feelings that she's not sure what to do with
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, that's essentially essentially the plot. So
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: if we move into the themes, a big one is
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: obviously immigration and identity. Here's the quote. We each thought
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of those long nights floating on the ocean, rocking back
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and forth in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in sight.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: We remembered the ships that kept their distance. We remembered
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: the people leaning over the decks of the ships to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: study us through their binoculars, and not liking what they saw,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: turning away from our boat.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: And then another one. I was the only Vietnamese student
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: at my school. On the first day of class, the
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: teacher introduced me to the other students by holding a
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: globe in one hand as she gave it a spin
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: with the other, and then pointing her finger at an
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: S shaped curve near a body of water. Was that
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: where I'd come from? As I stood before them in
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: a dress the color of an Easter egg, with my
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: feet encased in clear plastic sandals, the other students looked
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: at the globe and then back at me again. Some
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: whispered behind their hands, some just stared.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so again, she's not She's kind of plays feels
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: kind of about of place right in this a whole
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: situation in the because they first arrived at this guy
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: named Mel's house and he never really agreed to take
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: them in, but someone in his family did. His father, Yeah,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: so he was like, okay, I'll take them in. And
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: but it was a very much like it was not
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: in his the cards that he was expecting, right, and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: he his mother was there, right, and she was the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: one that put put her in the like easter dress
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: and the sandals.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: And she was her little doll.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, it was kind of dress, yes, But the narrator
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: there was this like glass case of figurines in Mel's
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: office or like in his his space. But there was
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: also this like glass paperweight. It sounds like to me.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: Like that's like like we've all seen it if you've
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: come from the nineties, you know.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, like a kind of a glass yeah,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: with a butterfly in it. And she, the narrator, was
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: just so concerned about this butterfly and felt like she
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: could hear it and that it was alive in there
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and it was trapped in there, and she wanted to
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: let it out. And everybody was kind of treating her
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: like you know, your young girl like, no, it's not.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: But eventually it built up and she grabbed it and
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: threw it and broke the glass case with all of
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the glass figurines in it in an attempt to free
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: the butterfly. And this is when Mel kicked them all out.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Nope, right, because that was the only rule in the house.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: Essential Well, there's a lot of rules, but the biggest
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: rule is don't touch these things because it had been
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: given from his father. And so both the mother and
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Mel were very very sentimental about these things. I'm assuming
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: it was worth some money, maybe not already, just really
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: loved it because the father. It was an interesting beginning
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: with the father, the portrayal of the father who had
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: a dream about saving the people of Vietnam because he
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: was a veteran I think, yeah, who would serve there
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and had been cared for there by the people quote unquote,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: and so he wanted to rescue these people.
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: That was his calling from a dream that he had supposedly.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Right, right, And this is this is one of those
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: things that when you get to the end, one of
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: those books that when you get to the end, you're like, oh, okay.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: But once I got to the end, I was she
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: was thinking, this is her brother like trapped in the glass.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: This is like the memory of her rather trapped in
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: the glass, and that's why she felt like she could hear,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: and she felt like it was she could just free
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: this butterfly, right, it would be alive.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: I think with all of that, I found that interesting
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: and we don't talk about it at the beginning scene,
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: and I I do relate to this because I have
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: a very vivid picture of myself in her memory of
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: arriving in the airport, not knowing English, being with nobody
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: that I knew, just kind of showing.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Up waiting to be picked up.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: And essentially that's what the experience happens for herself and
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: the four other men in MA and they are waiting
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: to be picked up, not realizing the person who had
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: sponsored them essentially had died and he was being they
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: were picked up by another dude who really obviously did
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: not want them. And the fact that I think they
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: the people who were picking them up, the mother especially
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: was thinking she was gonna get a reception of love
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and thankfulness instead, like they were scared and confused more
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: than anything else, and that level of like what do.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: We do who are you?
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Do?
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: We trust you? Do you trust us?
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: And that level of like being a burden and being
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: seen as a burden and realizing there a burden without
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: even knowing the language. Like it was very reminiscent like
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: at that immigration stage of like, yeah, okay, this is
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: our status.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: Here, this is our status.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: And I think it was a very telling beginning.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, here is another quote, and this one I
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: was like, I'm not sure where to put it, but
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: I just thought it was interesting because it's kind of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: about like all of these warnings that summer, as I
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: sat with her while she worked, she would issue her
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: warnings about the pool. She told me, look at you,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: you're as small as a mouse. The water is much
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: deeper than you think. About cars, she said, they can
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: hit you and keep going. About the needle on her
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: sewing machine, she said, watch your fingers. It can move
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: much faster than you can run. And about boys, she warned,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: they will try to press you into it. So this
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: is when they moved to the next place and it
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: has pool and water. We're gonna talk about this at
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: the end, but water is a huge theme right throughout
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: this whole thing, and this pool was very big thing.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: The Vietnamese word for water.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: It was very similar to the Korean word for water
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: more that's the Korean word, And I was like, oh,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: because that's it's like there's a heaviness about it, taking you,
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: taking you, taking your life, but taking you places too,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: and being lost in it. That's very, very deep into
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: that that they were talking about from jump, them arriving
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: from the water and the fact that her parents were
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: still in the water, and she didn't know what that meant,
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: but it was giant mm hmm. So here's another quote.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: We tumble out the window like people tumbling a continents.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: We are time traveling, weighed down by heavy furniture and
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: bags of precious junk. We find ourselves against Boss yellow truck.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Ma calls his name, her voice reaching like a hand
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: feeling for a tree trunk and darkness and the car.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Ma starts to cry. What about the sea? She asks,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: what about the garden? Boss says we can come back
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: in the morning and dig up the stalks of lemon
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: grass and fold the sea into a blue square. My sobbing.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: She is beating the dashboard with her fists. I want
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: to know, she says, I want to know I want
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: to know who is doing this to us? Hiccupping, She says,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I want to know why why there's always a fence.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Why there's always someone on the outside wanting someone something
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: on the inside and between them this sharp fence. We
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: are always leaving like this. And this is where I
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: got kind of confused, y'all, because she talks about leaving
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: her parents behind in the attic, and I was like, wait,
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: was her parents in the attic because there is like
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: a moment of conversations where they're prepping for the parents
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: to come, and then then a lot of confusion from me.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, well they had to, as this quote tells you,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: they had to leave kind of quickly because they just
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: got an eviction notice that was like, hey, we're gonna
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: break down, We're going to tear down all of this.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: And this was after they filled in the pool, right,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: and we'll rebuild it and you'll be the first on
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: our list when it's up and running again. But they
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: just had to They had to leave and steal essentially
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: their own stuff, write it out. So it happened very quickly,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: and I mean my interpretation was that the parents had
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: not shown up yet, that they were just preparing for them,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: and then they had to leave really quickly, and that's
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: why part of the devastation was, well, they're going somewhere
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: else now, or how we're going to tell them? How
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: will they know?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: One of your theories apparently that I just read, as
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: Riswega says at the end, the mother calls out of
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: her for her parents, which you've forgotten. This has a
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: double meaning. She's calling for her home in Vietnam to
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: return to Vietnam, as well as a photograph she's forgotten
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: at her Linda Vista home. So it's literal too, Okay,
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: So that's where I missed that one. But yeah, it's
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: because that's the entirety of the book, y'all. There's double meaning,
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: if not triple or like quadriple meaning, which is kind
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: of the poetic to it of like oh the deeper,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: the depth that this is probably one of those very
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: short books that if you read it three or four
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: different times, you're going to find three or four different things,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: like different meanings. Yes, which is beautiful and very very
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: intelligent that I apparently is not in my house.
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: Well, we were talking about this too, because you usually
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: listen audio and I read it with my eyes dress.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: But there are and we were talking about this too,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: of their own book. There are some books that are
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: just better. It's it's easier to like keep track of
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: the thread if you're reading it, and some it's better
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to do it the audio. But this one I did
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: have the thought when I was reading, I was like, oh, bit,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: that's jumping around. You might be a little bit confused about.
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: The story because it also has a picture, the photograph
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: in it, which is a big part of it, and
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: the story of like how.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: The mother and father got together. That's where the title
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: comes from. At least again, as you said, there's like
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: multiple meanings, right, that is what because the dad it's
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: like a the gangster we were looking for. He was
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a gangster right from North Korea. And she was like
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a Catholic girl, so her parents did not approve at all.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: Here's another quote. Mass has wars a bird with a
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: broken wing flying over the countryside, trailing blood and burying
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: crops and sorrow. If something grows in spite of this,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: it is both a curse and a miracle. When I
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: was born, she cried to know that it was war
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I was breathing in and she could never shake it
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: out of me. Ma says war makes it dangerous to breathe,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: though she knows you die if you don't. She says,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: she could have thrown me against the wall until I
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: broke or coughed up this war that is killing us all.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: She could have stomped on it in the dark and
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: danced on it like a mad woman dancing on gravestones.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: She could have grounded down to powder and spat on it,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: but didn't. I know. War has no beginning and no end.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: It crosses oceans like a splintered boat filled with people
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: singing a sad song. And that is a big piece
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: of this too, is the family aspect, and also the
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: trauma and the PTSD aspect, as we have been saying,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: because the the way that it manifests in the different
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: characters is different, but it is very clear, like the
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: father figure is like an angry alcoholic essentially. The narrator,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: as I've said, is having flashbacks, although she's not really
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: sure that she's having them. She's just having these like
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: emotions and memories come back based on certain sensations. One
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: of them is there's a scene where she goes to
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: get a bag of ice and she just carries it
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: in her arms, and she has something akin to a
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: panic attack because her fingers kind of get wrinkly and
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: she's cold, and it reminds her in some way of
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: her brother being dead in the water, and that that's
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: probably his fingers looked like. Also, a lot of the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: relationships are just really tense, a lot of unresolved issues
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: for sure. But again going back to the title, there
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: is a pretty strong father daughter relationship happening in here.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: He's the one that carried her to the boat. She
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: wanted to be like him. He is the gangster they
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: are looking for. It's interesting because she does see a
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: lot of his faults, but I guess she almost sees
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: them as like a strength. It's interesting the way she looks,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: she looks up to him and looks at him. But yeah,
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: he was the one that was there and carried her
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: in the boat.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She even says at one point, I want to
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: be the gangster we are all looking for, like implying
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: she wants to be like him. You know, even when
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: like the abusive situations happened, she still realizes that he
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: carried the family essentially in so many ways. And the
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: scenes that we have of just him and his wife
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: her her father and mother are really sweet, interestingly a
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: contrast to what she remembers from him and why she
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: stays away from him, right, But the way he cares
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: for her, and like the whole scene where he talks
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: about the news anchor said that we're going to get
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: this feast and we're going to cook this and she
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: he was talking about her being a cook, the mother
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: being the cook, and him being a gardener at that point,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: and she was like, oh, really, who's cooking this? And
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: he goes, I guess the gardener's implying that he would
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: feed her and help her. So it was interesting. It
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: was an interesting like flip, yeah, and how she saw
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: him in the youth and how the the father saw
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: him to the these scenes of him caring for her.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and they did have they were They would
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: fight like her parents would fight, but they always seemed
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: to kind of come back together. It was interesting, definitely, Okay,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and that I thought the mom was cheating at one point,
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: right because there was another guy at the movie theater
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, I don't know which, I guess.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: Speaking of adolescence and love is the theme in here.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Here's a quote. In the early days of my parents' courtship,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: my mother told stories. She confessed elaborate dreams about the
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: end of war. Food she'd eat, a banquet table, mangoes
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: piled to the ceiling. Songs she'd make up and sing,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: clapping her hands her head and throwing her hair like
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: a horse's mane. Dances. She dance, hopping from one foot
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: to the other. Unlike the responsible, favorite daughter or sister
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: she was to her family with my father in the forest,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: my mother became reckless, drunk on her youth and the
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: possibilities of love, ignoring the chores to be done at home.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: She rolled her pants up to her knees, stuck her
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: bare feet in puddles, and learned to smoke a cigarette.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: She rebelled bit a little bit.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because the scene that we get is she see
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: someone that she hadn't seen in years, like her It
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: seems like maybe her first love. But it also coincides
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: with the author talking about her first contact with a
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: young boy, So it kind of like that melding of
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: realizing what her mother was doing and what she was
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: doing as well, and her first experience with love and lust.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: And here's another quote, the barbed wire gates open, and
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: she crosses through to him, arrives warm, the slightest film
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: of sweat on her bare arms. To his disbelieving eyes,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: she says, it's me. It's me, shy and formal and breathless.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: My parents always meeting for the first time, savoring the
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: sound of a name, marveling at the bones of the
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: face cut by the bones of the hand. I trail
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: behind him the tip of their dragon's tail. I am
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: drawn along like a silken banner on the body of
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: a kite.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: Very beautiful, it's good.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: It's really beautiful. Poetic verse.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: I'm attaching that somewhere.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: It's a long quote, but yeah, I just want to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: briefly touch on this. There is some stuff about religion
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: in here that I thought was interesting. Here's a quote.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: My friends told me that if he gave the church
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: people the chance, they would open their little books and,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: pointing to the pictures of fresh fruit, say things like,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: this is heaven. Here's the Kingdom of God, where no
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: one suffers. Their fingers tracing an invisible line connecting all
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the healthy people walking through the sunlit fields. My friends
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: and I took the pamphlets the church people handed out
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and studied the drawings of people having picnics on the
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: banks of the Long Blue River, or harvesting wheat, or
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: standing arm in arm looking into each other's eyes. To us,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: these pictures were more unbelievable than the warriors we saw
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: flying in the Kung Fu movies. As far as we
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: could understand it, the church on our street was like
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: a ladder to the kingdom. I thought that was an
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: interesting through line, right there is her and her mom
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: liked to go see Kung Fu movies, so there is
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: that through line throughout. But also, yes, there is there
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: are some there's.
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: A church on the street and Jehovah's Witness church there.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, there's some people church people about and her and
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: most of her friends seemed mostly confused by it.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting conversation about the colonization that was happening
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: with the Catholicism of Johoah's Witness and different religions that
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: came through in Vietnam, especially during this era. And I
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: think it has a bigger conversation because she's more intrigued
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: by the tails of it. Yes, I think we all
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: are as children, but she is more intrigued by that
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: than the actual belief system.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Right the story of it, which, yeah, leads us to
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the next point.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Dreams.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: Dreams are a big part in this. Here's a quote.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: I began to play with the ceiling, a game that
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: I used to play with the sky when I was
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: lying in the fishing boat on the sea. At that time,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I thought that everyone and everything I missed was hovering
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: behind the sky. The game involved looking for a seam
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: to the sky, a thread I could pull. I told
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: myself that if I could find the thread and focus
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: on it hard enough with my eyes, I could tear
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: the sky open, and my mother, my brother, my grandfather,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: my flippops, my favorite shells would all fall down to me.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: And she's a very imaginative. She's a very imaginative narrator.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: I remember when we were reading, we always like give
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: each other a couple of books to choose from, And
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: when I was reading the summary of this book, it's
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: said in there like she feels things and sees things
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: very strongly.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I feel like that's common for only like lonely children,
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: especially when they're forced to be isolated. So language barrier
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: and she talked about being the only Vietnamese child not
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: being able to speak to anyone, and everybody else were adults,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: so she had to dream.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: She dreamed as.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Well as like, yes, trauma, so when you have that
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: kind of like overlaying each other. And I find it
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: interesting that they use the ideas of photos with them
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: through here talking about this is photo number one, this
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: is what too, this is photo death, because I've talked
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: about repeatedly like being a child with no true memories,
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: like meaning like a lot of the times that what
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: we grow up to remember are things that are fed
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: to us and shown to us through photographs. So if
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: you only have a photograph with no contexts, the things
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: that you imagine, which is kind of what she does.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: M hmm. I thought it was interesting.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I also I thought like, because this was you know,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the escaping war, Vietnam war, coming to America for quote
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: hopefully a better life, you know, and so like that
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: dream of that as well of like maybe it will
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: be better here. And then yes, when they arrived, it
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: was isolating and scary, and but that did make me
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: think of think of that too, of sort of that
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: dream of something across the water is maybe better, right right.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Taking you somewhere else. Here's another quote. I lay in
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: bed and remembered the things I had seen in the
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: swimming pool. I remember the body of a boy gliding
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: along the floor of the pool, sunlight streaming across his
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: bare back. I remembered the reflections of clouds, family of clouds,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: and birds migrating. I remember the leaves that floated to
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: the edges of the swimming pool and nested there. I
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: remembered how the layer of the sun made the water
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: glint like a window pane. I remember the reflections of
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: a ball bouncing in the courtyard, and the clotheslines strung
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: from reil to rel, the sheets fluttering like banners in
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: the wind. But what I remembered most were the boys flying.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: I remember their bodies arking through the air and plunging down.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I remembered how their hands parted the water, and how
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: as they disappeared, the last thing I would see were
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: the pale soles of their feet, falling asleep. I remember
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: the brightness of the full moon shimmering into the swimming pool,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: so close, so close, like a caught fish.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, going back to the pool, as we said,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: it was a big piece of this story. She would
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: see these boys jumping into the pool, and she would
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: kind of observe how they jumped into the pool and
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: would think about wanting to do it herself. But I
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: just love this section because it does showcase outgrade of
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: a writer she is, but also the narrator really taking
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: this in and the way that those memories sometimes you
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: don't know why they form, but they do. And I
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: was thinking about this of the day. I have some
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: memories that I'm like, I don't know why my brain
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: decided that was important. I remember it so clearly right,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: And I feel like this is a good example of her.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I mean I feel like that in here it was
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: her thinking I want to go jump in that water.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: I want to go jump in the pool, and that
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: there's just something so close that I haven't captured yet,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: or that's just like right out of my reach. But
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: it's just very vivid imagery, and I think it is
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: a good, a really good example of memories and how
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: they can form like that.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: I think it's also like the person of the kids
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: doing that to the fact that the mother wouldn't let
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: her because of our own memories of water and how
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: she feels the water is cursed and then the closing
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: of the bowl because the landlord has seen this and
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: it was the beginning and was like, oh, okay, we're
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: gonna fill this up because you don't get yourself killed,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: like essentially doing some of the things. Like all of
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: that has that same theme of kind of like the
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: circling about of like the joy and freedom, but then
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: the loss and then the forbidding, like it just all
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: happened with that theme again about water.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Yes, because the the mother was yeah, she was like
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: I want to be near water, but she didn't want
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: to go in, right, she didn't want her daughter to
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: go in. And then when they filled up the pool
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: because these boys were jumping off recklessly, she was very
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: hurt by it and very like, oh, well, now we
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: don't have water near us. And yes, as we said,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: water is a big theme throughout. As you said, the
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Vietnamese word for water very close to the Korean word.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: It is now so sweet. I can't say it like nop.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: I think nope, no, okay, no, that's what it is,
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: so nope and I'm sorry to all the Vietnamese people,
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: which is like kind of that same level more like that,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: it's very close, but that is yeah, us, I just
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: looked it up.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, And according to what I looked up, it is
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: in Vietnamese the word for water and the word for
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: a nation, a country, and homeland are one and the
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: same because Vietnam is surrounded by water. So and it
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: was very prevalent, as we've we've mentioned several times the pool,
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: but as the story progresses, you don't really know the
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: brother has died fully until more towards the end.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: Right, you don't realize there was a brother, yes, until
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: the end exactly.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: And it was as they were getting onto the boats.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: He was jumping between boats and drowned, and they brought
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: the body back and the family was saying, like the
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: water was heavy, this is bad water, and so that
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: like having him in there, it was like, this is
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: bad water. And so throughout having those things like with
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the pool, like wanting it there but not wanting to
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: go in it, as you were saying, kind of that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: cycle of here's all of the good things with it,
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: but here's all the bad things with it, and the
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: trauma with it, and then having like the narrator want
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: to jump in the water because doesn't quite has repressed
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: this memory pretty fully for most of the story. I
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: really liked it. It was beautiful, very beautiful. It is
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: something definitely I would like to read again because it's
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: very poetic and now that I think, now that I
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: know how it moves, I think I would be much
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: better at keeping track of like okay, I know where
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: things are like people are right. But I do highly
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: recommend it. It's fairly short and very beautifully written.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: It is yes, go eat it.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: Yes well. Listeners. If you have read it and you
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: have any thoughts, please let us know if you have
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: any suggestions for the segment. Also, please let us know.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: You can emails a Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: We've met us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: on Instagram and TikTok at stuff when I've told you.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and we have a book you can get wherever you
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: get your books. Thanks is always too, our super producer
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Christina or executive producer My and our contributor Joey, Thank
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: you and thank see you for listening Stuff I'll Never
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: told you. These production of I Heart Radio. For more
• 31:50
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• 31:53
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• 32:00
  Speaker 4: No.