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The Gangster We Are All Looking For

by Lê Thi Diem Thúy

3.41 · rating details · 603 ratings · 109 reviews

This acclaimed novel reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country.

In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intens...more

Paperback, 176 pages

Published April 13th 2011 by Anchor

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Community Reviews

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Jul 14, 2007

Brendan rated it

As novels go, The Gangster We Are All Looking For -- Le Thi Diem Thuy's beautifully told account of a Vietnamese immigrant family -- is soaking wet.

The sea is a constant, foreboding presence. Bodies are washing ashore on the first page and they are washing ashore on the last page. A man tells his beloved that if she would marry him, "he would pull the moon out of the sky and turn it into a pool for her to wash her feet in." "Bad water" is blamed for the death of a...moreAs novels go, The Gangster We Are All Looking For -- Le Thi Diem Thuy's beautifully told account of a Vietnamese immigrant family -- is soaking wet.

The sea is a constant, foreboding presence. Bodies are washing ashore on the first page and they are washing ashore on the last page. A man tells his beloved that if she would marry him, "he would pull the moon out of the sky and turn it into a pool for her to wash her feet in." "Bad water" is blamed for the death of a young boy, and a simple glass from the tap is drunk "desperately, as though it were a reprieve."

Such pervasive dampness is hardly an uncommon phenomenon in the literary fiction of Vietnam, which is a coastal nation, after all. One practically requires a raincoat to peruse the work of Duong Thu Huong, the Communist state's leading writer-dissident and water-conjurer. In Memories of a Pure Spring (2000), where all epiphanies come equipped with monsoons, the hero searches for freedom in "the sea of the sea," only to end up drenched in a storm: "Rain, still rain. Water and more water, white sheets of it, as far as the eye could see."

The Gangster We Are All Looking For goes a step further, telling us right at the start that in Vietnamese, "the word for water and the word for a nation, a country, and a homeland are one and the same: nu'o'c."

The irony is that this novel, Thuy Le's first, is not actually Vietnamese but American, retelling the oldest of American stories: that of immigrants desperately seeking assimilation. It features a dysfunctional family worthy of a Todd Solondz film, where the parents scream and fight ("like two dogs chasing each other's tails"), the mother chops off her hair in a fit, and the daughter runs away to become a writer.

In Confucian Vietnam, the family is the gravity that keeps one anchored to the earth. In a California housing development called Linda Vista, on the other hand, a family portrait is secreted away up to the attic and left behind in the next move. A ringing phone is met with terror for the obligations that may wait on the other end.

Still, as this family stumbles through its stormy version of the American Dream, where everyone is an outsider trying to fit in, Vietnam lingers close by. It's a connection not so much of blood, the narrator is fond of saying, as of water.
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Jul 25, 2011

Adam rated it

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I entered this book knowing little more than its title and that it was about the experience of a young Vietnamese refugee. The title led me to expect a different sort of book, but it was nonetheless engaging. Lê Thi Diem Thúy tells the story of a refugee family’s fracturing and decline in Southern California. Refugees are unlike voluntary immigrants in many ways. They arrive on foreign shores with no real desire to be there. They have been forced to abandon their homes and country, to which ther...moreI entered this book knowing little more than its title and that it was about the experience of a young Vietnamese refugee. The title led me to expect a different sort of book, but it was nonetheless engaging. Lê Thi Diem Thúy tells the story of a refugee family’s fracturing and decline in Southern California. Refugees are unlike voluntary immigrants in many ways. They arrive on foreign shores with no real desire to be there. They have been forced to abandon their homes and country, to which there is still strong attachment, by a life-threatening crisis. They also have scant resources with which to rebuild in their new home. Thúy effectively conveys the “looking backyard” of refugees toward home with episodic sections within chapters that switch back and forth from California to memories of Vietnam. She begins the book stating “In Vietnamese, the word for water and the word for a nation, a country, and a homeland are one in the same.” The descriptive language employed in the episodes, combined with the shifts in setting from California to Vietnam, foster a sort of dreamlike feel of waves gently reaching up a beach before being drawn back to sea. It is an effective device in a sorrowful story of family fracturing as the father’s strength of will erodes away.
The story is told from the perspective of the daughter, which I can only assume is premised on some of the lived experiences of Thúy, since she arrived in the United States in the same year, by the same way, and at the same age as the girl in the story. The central figure in the story, though, is the father Ba. Ba arrives in California a protective and nurturing father, disoriented by his new surrounding but seemingly committed to making things work. The slow decline takes place in chapters following, which seems to be spaced about three years apart from one another. As Ba’s spirit is worn and his will weakened by various hardships in the United States and undoubtedly the longing for home, he turns increasingly to drinking, drugs, and domestic violence. In one of the many beautifully illustrative passages in the book, Thúy writes “now there hangs the familiar smoke of small rooms crowded with people larger than their situation. People who, feeling they have no recourse to change the circumstances of their lives, fold down, crumble into their own shadows. This is what I saw my father do.” As Ba’s strength of person declines as he feels a failure to his family, the bonds between he and his wife and he and his daughter fray. The book’s title, “The Gangster We are All Looking For,” I believe, is meant to express the longing of the daughter for the father that she used to know.
The book reads quickly and is engrossing for the first four chapters. The final chapter did not read as well for me. It felt as if Thúy had a harder time writing the daughter’s character when she reached her late teens than she did in writing her early years. The transition of episodes between Vietnam and California also seemed more abrupt in the last chapter and did not work as well as the earlier ones. Nevertheless, it is still a good read.(less)

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Jul 13, 2011

Libby rated it

Shelves: year-of-women

This book, a fictionalized memoir of a Vietnamese girl who settles in San Diego, was selected for the One Book, One San Diego initiative. The book plays fast and loose with time and memory and feels like at least two different books smushed together. The first is a pretentious rendering of the protagonist's childhood that I found about as meaningful as the plastic bag dancing in the wind in "American Beauty" (which is to say prettily imagined but lacking something in essentials). In fa...more

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Sep 27, 2010

Matt rated it

The personal history of le thi diem thuy is certainly one worth telling. She was born in Vietnam at the height of American involvement in their war. Two of her siblings drowned during her childhood. Her oldest brother drowned in the ocean in Vietnam, and a sister drowned in a Malaysian refugee camp. At the age of six, le and her father were picked up by an American naval ship and placed in a refugee camp in Singapore. Eventually they would be reunited with her mother and a sister in southern Cal...moreThe personal history of le thi diem thuy is certainly one worth telling. She was born in Vietnam at the height of American involvement in their war. Two of her siblings drowned during her childhood. Her oldest brother drowned in the ocean in Vietnam, and a sister drowned in a Malaysian refugee camp. At the age of six, le and her father were picked up by an American naval ship and placed in a refugee camp in Singapore. Eventually they would be reunited with her mother and a sister in southern California, where she spent the rest of her childhood.

"Gangster" is, in a sense, her memoir, in that the narrator's story very closely mirror's le's story. But she chose not to tell events as they happened to her, instead constructing a story from her own reflections about her family and other people she has known or met. After I finished reading the book, I found it telling to see her describe it this way: "It's a novel about memory, the memories these characters hold onto of their lives in Vietnam while they are in San Diego. 'Gangster' is not my personal active recollection; it is the personal recollection of the narrator of the book as she tries to face the death of her brother."

Normally, I find work that closely resembles real events, but chooses to tailor them to suit the wishes of the narrator, to be unsettling. From the standpoint of telling the story of actual people and actual histories, it's too easy to distort real events and real characters in such a way as to distort reality. But le's story is "honest" in the sense that the author is inspired by her own story and her own feelings and not constructing them from her idea of someone else's experience. And the author is clearly telling her story in such a way as to reflect well her own talents. This book is a beautiful piece of work.

I was blown away at a couple points during the book, moments that were less about plot development and more about expressions of emotion. I'll leave it at that.

San Diego's public library and public radio station team up each year to choose one book to promote in the "One book, One San Diego" program. The event series seeks to unite San Diego through book chats, author and scholar lectures, and film screenings that relate to the themes of a single book. This book was chosen for 2011, and it seems they have really picked a winner. It's more a story of Vietnam than it is one of San Diego, but both places are very much characters in the book. It's also the first selection in five years to be a work of fiction.
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Aug 02, 2010

Ljuneosborne rated it

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 ...more

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Nov 10, 2009

Emily rated it

Shelves: 2003

Today--speedily even by my standards--I read thuy lê's new book The Gangster We Are All Looking For. It is one of those new novels-in-stories, or stories-as-a-novel pieces that are so popular now. It reminded me primarily of two other books about the Asian-American experience: When the Emperor Was Divine and The Woman Warrior.

lê, who isn't into capitalization, has written a quasi-autobiographical series of vignettes about a young Vietnamese girl in California. It includes scenes from w...moreToday--speedily even by my standards--I read thuy lê's new book The Gangster We Are All Looking For. It is one of those new novels-in-stories, or stories-as-a-novel pieces that are so popular now. It reminded me primarily of two other books about the Asian-American experience: When the Emperor Was Divine and The Woman Warrior.

lê, who isn't into capitalization, has written a quasi-autobiographical series of vignettes about a young Vietnamese girl in California. It includes scenes from when she and her father first arrived on our shores, when her mother finally joins them, and a flashback to the death of her older brother in Vietnam. The best parts of the writing aren't specific to the immigrant experience, but rather descriptions of how children think and play.

When the Jehovah's Witnesses weren't there, we chased each other up and down the stairs and around the towers of their castle. That summer, we made up a game called Kingdom. At first, Kingdom was about pretending we were in Heaven [about which they'd learned from the Witnesses:]. We tried to be the people in the little books. We swept the stairs and kept the castle clean. We walked around smiling, waving to invisible people in our heavenly community. We put our hands on each other's shoulders and said things like "My son," "My friend," "God knows." When we got bored, Kingdom became about having fights and waging war. (49)

The vignette format reminded me of Julie Otsuka's book about the internment of Japanese-Americans, but it's less abstract here for the simple reason that lê uses the first-person. Otsuka uses "the girl," "the woman," etc. to describe her characters, and this serves only to reinforce the impression that the characters are diaphanous and distant. lê, on the other hand, is just "I," and the reader succeeds in understanding her outlook, if not all the facts surrounding her immigration experience.

This book also provokes the question of how to write a work of this type in the wake of Maxine Hong Kingston's seminal "Memoir of a Girlhood Among the Ghosts." I certainly found resonances of Kingston's writing in Gangster, such as when lê writes "There is not a trace of blood anywhere except here, in my throat, where I am telling you this." (99) The elemental, intentionally brutal, mythic aspects are quite similar. Perhaps the comparison is to Kingston is unfair, since I first read her book as a teenager, and it made a searing impression on me--but I think that's a reading experience I share with many others.

Gangster is a success, as far as it goes. Like so many novels-in-stories/stories-as-a-novel, it felt to me unformed, embryonic, a sketch for a great novel that could have been. I wonder if the current atmosphere of bright young writers expecting publishing contracts on the basis of mere stories isn't at fault. But that is a separate question, and the thought of what might have been shouldn't be allowed to prevent anyone from tackling this densely impressionistic, but brief book.(less)

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Jul 07, 2010

Teachers4socialjustice Book added it

Here are some discussion questions that came out of our book club:

1. How does the passage on p. 95 beginning with “…two dogs chasing each other’s tail…” describe the parents’ relationship?
2. What is the significance of the title?
3. How does this book showcase father and daughter relationships?
4. This novel focuses on the places in between such as pages 109 and p. 37. Does the reader always know where these places are?
5. How is this novel about running away to...more

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Feb 15, 2011

Aaron rated it

Shelves: southeast_asia, literary_fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read this book as part of the One Book; One San Diego program; not sure if I'll participate in any of the scheduled discussions, but I did want to check out this novel about the Vietnamese immigrant experience in San Diego.

The novel is told from the perspective of a child who is one of the "boat people," dumped on the shores of America with her father and four uncles. Eventually, her mother is also able to join them, and we follow the family as they work to settle and as...moreI read this book as part of the One Book; One San Diego program; not sure if I'll participate in any of the scheduled discussions, but I did want to check out this novel about the Vietnamese immigrant experience in San Diego.

The novel is told from the perspective of a child who is one of the "boat people," dumped on the shores of America with her father and four uncles. Eventually, her mother is also able to join them, and we follow the family as they work to settle and assimilate in America.

The novel focuses much on the relationship between father and daughter (both could be considered the "Gangster We Are All Looking For" from the title). The narrator picks up not only physical characteristics from her father, but also emotional ones as well.

The author is able to transport us into the mind of the child with wonderful passages explaining her use of imagination and the games she and her friends make up. I thought this was the most well-written portion of the book (the end starts to jump around as the lives of the family become unwound); vivid language helps explain what the girl sees and hears - it helps her give meaning to a world that is totally unfamiliar to her. This is something I think we all went through as kids, but it's easy to forget how ubiquitous our imagination is to helping us understand that which we don't.

In the end, glimpses of a grown-up narrator and her family falling apart come quickly. She (the narrator) has learned how to adjust and assimilate in her own way, running from a father who slowly loses his ability to connect with his daughter. There's sickness, and the loss of a homeland becomes more keenly felt as the novel wraps up.

Sparse, vivid, and affecting, I think this is a book to help one connect with the immigrant experience in America. I tried to imagine my wife and her parents going through similar situations when they arrived her, tried to see how similar things may have happened to them. That feeling of being adrift; neither of one place or another, is something that I have never experienced.(less)

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Jul 27, 2010

Lis rated it

Shelves: book-club, 2010-reads

written from the perspective of an immigrant girl from vietnam, having moved to san diego. true to her country of origin, water is a constant theme: people washing in on the shore, boys jumping into a pool, even words sounding like a drop in a well. it goes on this way as constant themes stay throughout. for example, she hardly talks about her mother without mention of her clutching her pocketbook. but it's a short book, such a quick read (easily took me one day without fully devoted attention),...morewritten from the perspective of an immigrant girl from vietnam, having moved to san diego. true to her country of origin, water is a constant theme: people washing in on the shore, boys jumping into a pool, even words sounding like a drop in a well. it goes on this way as constant themes stay throughout. for example, she hardly talks about her mother without mention of her clutching her pocketbook. but it's a short book, such a quick read (easily took me one day without fully devoted attention), that it doesn't have time to get old anyway. chronologically it skips back and forth from america and vietnam, the transition between the two seeming less smooth and more interruptive as the pace quickens towards the end. also, at one point it lead me to believe something important is about to happen but then left me hanging.

it does a good job at telling the events as they would be seen from a child's perspective. things that may seem silly still make perfect sense if you can remember being a child. this is one point i've hated about other books, such as lonely bones, where it seems the author forgot what it was like to be a child and the narrator instead just sounds stupid. in this book she's not selling the child's point of view short, and it does a great deal to enhance the story. the child seems a bit ageless, though, and when at some point she tells of something happening when she's older, it's like i don't even know her anymore.

as i was reading it i have to say i felt somewhat disappointed she didn't talk so much of her life and family before, in vietnam, when they were all together, and of what life was like then. i was even more disappointed she didn't describe the journey more, epecially the sea voyage. ultimately what she described was being a kid in san diego. vietnam was the family history, but the story was about san diego. i guess the issue is this isn't vietnamese literature, it's american literature. this was more about finding a new home than about the old one.(less)

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Mar 02, 2011

Pretty Girls Make Gravy rated it

Shelves: fiction

The Gangster We Are All Looking For is the 2011 choice for One Book, One San Diego; which is a partnership between our local NPR station (KPBS) and the San Diego Public Library. Every year a committee chooses several candidate books and KPBS encourages listeners to go online and vote for their choice in a poll. The winner is promoted on KPBS throughout the year, the author does some interviews, and there discussions of the book are held at local branches of the Public Library system every so oft...moreThe Gangster We Are All Looking For is the 2011 choice for One Book, One San Diego; which is a partnership between our local NPR station (KPBS) and the San Diego Public Library. Every year a committee chooses several candidate books and KPBS encourages listeners to go online and vote for their choice in a poll. The winner is promoted on KPBS throughout the year, the author does some interviews, and there discussions of the book are held at local branches of the Public Library system every so often. I think any program that encourages a whole city to read is pretty awesome, so I’m sort of ashamed to say that this is the first year I’ve participated.

This year I did it. I had heard excerpts from the book read aloud in KPBS promotions, and so I knew that it was a sort of memoir and was based in San Diego. That was enough to interest me sufficiently, as I’m a sucker for a good memoir, and the neighborhood I first lived in here in San Diego was just a few blocks from the largely Vietnamese area of City Heights. I picked up The Gangster We Are All Looking For at my local bookstore, as there were none available at any of our local libraries due to One Book One San Diego. I started it that night, and I finished it the next night. It’s a short book. And a good book.

The book is based on experiences that he author, lê thi diem thúy, had a as a child. Her arrival in San Diego as a refugee from Vietnam at the age of 6 with her father; her experiences growing up in various neighborhoods in San Diego (City Heights, Normal Heights, and Linda Vista), and the tumultuousness of her parents relationship once her mother arrived from Vietnam several years later. The imagery in her writing is so vivid, it’s so beautifully written, that the style is almost more poetic than prose. The book is loosely structured around her age progression; but she frequently jumps back and forth which was the only thing that I found to be a little bothersome.

I recommend The Gangster We Are All Looking For to anyone who lives in or is interested in San Diego; or the Vietnamese immigrant experience in San Diego.

PGMG rating: 4 out of 5 bowls of pho.
Pretty Girls Make Gravy

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Dec 03, 2008

Nan added it

I just read this book for the 5th time. I have to admit that I did not like the book when I first read it, but with each reading, my appreciation for this book increases. I love its poetic language and fragmented narrative. Here is one of my favorite passages:

"After I ran away, I phoned my parents only a couple of times, to let them know I was all right. The last call was from the airport, to tell them that I was moving to the East Coast to go to school. My father wasn't ho...more

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Sep 27, 2011

Tara rated it

Shelves: 2011

I love the fact that my new city does a "One book, One San Diego" incentive. However, I saw that one of the three selections for next year is one I've already read and wasn't impressed with, so right off the bat I had my doubts. Also, can we just talk about how it's sort of lame that after, what, 5 years of choosing just one book, they go with the top 3 nominations for 2012? Make a commitment, SD! Stick to your guns! Anyway.

This short memoir did absolutely nothing for me. R...more

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Apr 22, 2011

Tami rated it

This is a short book...really just a sampling of the thoughts and impressions and memories of a young girl who has come to America from Vietnam. It doesn't flow smoothly from one ecene to the next--it is not meant to. It is very much like the way a youth summarizes their life--fleeting between fantasy and struggle, imagination and stark reality. The challenges she faces (war, escape from Vietnam, death of a family member, adjusting to a new language and culture)are painted in a rather poetic ...more

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Mar 15, 2009

Catherine rated it

I feel somewhat neglected by the author when the plot gives way so often to more evocative, lyrical moments. In my less generous moments, I have even found those moments repetitive. But then I try to focus on the artistic purposefulness of the way in which the writer returns to water imagery and how those evocative, surreal, lyrical moments involving water imagery repeat with a rhythm much like ocean waves, and the imagery and prose style parallel the experience of floating, drifting, being imme...more

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May 05, 2011

Amber rated it

I started out this book with low expectations based on others' reviews but since I was reading it for book club, I picked it up anyway. I found myself really enjoying it for the first little bit. But then it started to drag and feel disjointed. And then when I finally dragged my way through to the end and read that she doesn't even have a brother even though the book continually mentions a brother and he is a major theme in the book I was completely disillusioned. And then I found out that the b...more

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Mar 16, 2011

Leslie rated it

I was not very impressed with the story line and character development in this novel. The language was beautiful and poetic, but I could not get into the story because the timeline kept shifting, and the narrator seemed unreliable. Maybe this was because she was a child for most of the book, but I was confused at many points. I wanted to find out more about the father- why was he called a gangster? How did the mother find them after being left in Vietnam? How did the narrator manage to appl...more

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Dec 06, 2008

Topher rated it

A lyric look at a childhood of a Vietnamese immigrant. This book read impressionistically and lyrically--like a long form poem written in prose. There are slight hints at pre and post war Vietnam. How families were torn apart, rebuilt themselves and were torn apart again. You will be unsatisfied if you are looking for a narrative message. Just to read it for the beauty though goes far enough. The author will be visiting my class in January and I am excited for my studnets to have a chance to spe...more

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Feb 26, 2009

Andrew added it

Shelves: american-fiction, american-fiction-since-2000, asian-american-fiction

I told a friend I'd never read any Southeast Asian fiction. This was the closest she had at her apartment. It's awfully, awfully easy to write romans-a-clef about childhood layered thick with magical-realist tropes-- Sandra Cisneros, I'm looking at you-- and most of the time it's utter schlock. Somehow, the use of motif and the sheer beauty of the writing prevented this from slipping into that category. Not to call it a great book or anything, but it's a pleasant, light, kinda kitschy, kinda...more

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May 24, 2009

Danielle rated it

I am in the habit of looking up syllabi of professors i admire in the field when i want to read books from other countries. This one is from Vietnam and was recommended by a prof. at Stanford. I loved it. I feel that the author tries very hard to surround teh past with magic and sugar and it still hurts and that's what makes this book beautiful--the idea that even when you look at all things from the kindest possible angle, they still hurt. It reminded me of Stop Time, another bildungsroman, fro...more

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Aug 06, 2011

Virginia Jacobs rated it

This book was beautifully and poignantly written. The language was simple, yet compelling and visual. The book is clearly somewhat autobiographical, and while there are undercurrents of sadness, there is also enough joy and happiness to make the corners of one’s heart turn up, because we have all been there, too, we just didn’t say it as well.

For example, the chapter titled palm is about both palm trees and the palm of the narrator’s hand. The opening paragraph says, “The trees in...more

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Dec 19, 2007

Emile rated it

Along with a child-like attention to detail and soft, poetic language there is a magical quality to the story-telling in this memoir - like the interweaving of fact and imagination in a Maurice Sendak book. In 'The Gangster', time, space and reality are grounded in reality but fluid. Increaingly rapid transitions between past and present make the urgency of the past strikingly, and appropriately, immediate. At the same time our narrator seems to pull back, floating higher above what her life has...more

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Sep 02, 2011

Ben rated it

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 h...more

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Sep 11, 2011

itpdx rated it

· review of another edition

A lyrical and touching story of immigration and family. The narrator arrives in the US from Viet Nam as a six-year-old with her father. The book touches on their experiencing southern California and trying to understand the culture. The wife and mother joins them and they move through a number of immigrant enclaves. The father struggles with PTSD. The daughter runs away from the parents she can never understand and tries to make sense of her childhood memories of Viet Nam. There is much beautifu...more

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May 17, 2011

Kathy rated it

Interesting little book about a Vietnam refugee and her family. But so sporadic and didn't seem to flow real well. Interesting to me a bit because she talks about where they lived and it's here in my hometown of San Diego. And back in the 70's and early 80's I do remember a lot of what we called boat people showing up in our schools etc... not knowing a bit of english and how hard it must have been for them. Also didn't like the ending. This was a book club selection for the month.

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Apr 08, 2011

Michelle Campbell rated it

I am not really sure what to say about this one. It took me awhile to get into and considering this is a really fast read says a lot. I read the first 50 pages and then sat it down for a week or so. I thought I was going to give it up but could not bring myself to do it so gave it one more try. I ended up liking it. It reads more like poetry than a novel. I like that it is set in my home town. It read like a memoir so I was surprised to learn it was fiction after finishing it. The imagery in thi...more

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Mar 02, 2011

Christina Wainwright rated it

The book was short enough that I was able to read the entire thing this morning, between when waking and having to get ready for work. My library's book group is discussing it tonight, and I also wanted to find a passage to read aloud in honor of Read Across America Day. Lovely though the writing is, the book defied my quest to find an arresting passage to read aloud. It builds and bends around corners, mixing and melting like when I try to hold onto my own memories.

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Mar 10, 2011

Bill Sannwald rated it

Poetic without being obtuse. The book reads like memories floating through your subconscious as you lie awake in bed late at night, unable to sleep. Memories can often be one big jumbled mess, especially when concerning something traumatic. In that sense, the transitory prose works well. I particularly liked the passages from the narrator's young childhood years, which capture the bizarre sense and order kids create of the magical and mysterious world around them.

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Sep 20, 2010

Karol rated it

Shelves: fiction

I discovered an excerpt of this in Best American Essays 1997, one of my favorite editions, but the book released as a novel. It's a spare and poetic story of a Vietnamese girl growing up in California, the daughter of immigrants from South Vietnam. It's possible that the ending goes a bit abstract, touching lightly on dark matter, but I didn't mind at all. I loved this story and the way it was told.

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Apr 01, 2009

Alan rated it

Shelves: novels

poetic novel about Vietnamese immigrants to USA (California). Told from the p.o.v. of a young girl I enjoyed her descriptions of the weird place she's ended up in, and the behaviour of those around her (particularly teenage boys). Slim, almost plotless (although there is the story of her family's disintegration under the pressure) but full of memorable imagery.

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Oct 08, 2010

Marilyn rated it

A series of poetic little vignettes about life for a young woman who immigrated from Vietnam to San Diego. Very lyrical. Very evocative. Easy, quick read. Not much plot. When I realized that the title indicated that it was a novel---well, that actually decreased my evaluation. The impressionistic style I could excuse in a memoir seemed excessive in a novel.

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About Lê Thi Diem Thúy

Lê Thi Diem Thúy left Vietnam on a boat with her father in 1978 and grew up in San Diego, California. In 1990, she moved to Massachusetts and enrolled in Hampshire College. After graduating in 1993, Thúy traveled to Paris to research French colonial picture postcards made in the early 1900's.

Today, she is an author and performance artist based in Northampton. She recently finished a ...more

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“When I grow up I am going to be the gangster we are all looking for.” — 5 people liked it

“I don't know how time moves or which of our sorrows or our desires it is able to wash away.” — 2 people liked it

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The Gangster We Are All Looking For

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