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there are forces in me that are very strong. Just as strong as the forces that make the two women from Northern Louisiana and Minnesota speak and dress and act the way they do. They have no control of those things. I doubt if they could change any of those things even if they were conscious of them and wanted to.
I spent the first twenty years of my life living in a country and a culture that expected certain attitudes from women and men and you can’t just put all that aside because your mind says, Why not? Nobody’s mind is that strong. You have to wait. Things have to change from the inside.
When I first saw the movie “The Invisible Man” with Claude Rains, it got me to thinking about what it would be like to be invisible. And the scary part was always getting yourself into a place where you shouldn’t be and then suddenly becoming visible again. Well, that’s how I felt at that moment.
These were human beings and they had to have their own narrowness, their own prejudices.
in Vietnamese culture the unborn and even the unconceived children are already thought to be part of the family
“Do you believe in romance, Gabrielle?” I turned my head and looked at her. I hadn’t thought about the subject really, and yet I felt like I would say something. I actually wondered what would come out of my mouth, like I was sitting in a chair behind me and eavesdropping. This was getting a little strange. “Romance?” I said. “I’m not sure. Not in the easy ways, I don’t. Not for anybody over the age of twenty.” “The easy ways.” Eileen repeated this phrase thoughtfully and I turned it over in my mind, too. The Love Boat, for instance. And a lot of the other things I could easily get weepy over
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This is our custom from Vietnam. When you are very old, you put aside a week or two to receive the people of your life so that you can tell one another your feelings, or try at last to understand one another, or Simply say good-bye. It is a formal leave-taking, and with good luck you can do this before you have your final illness.
A Vietnamese family is extended as far as the bloodline strings us together, like so many paper lanterns around a Village square. And we all give off light together. That’s the way it has always been in our culture.
I am a Hòa Ho Buddhist and I believe in harmony among all living things, especially the members of a Vietnamese family.
This is the saying of the Hòa Hào. We follow the teachings of a monk who broke away from the fancy rituals of the other Buddhists. We do not need elaborate pagodas or rituals. The Hòa Hào believes that the maintenance of our spirits is very simple, and the mystery of joy is simple, too. The four characters mean “A good scent from a strange mountain.”
there are so many who have gone on before me into the world of spirits and I yearn for them all, yearn to find them all together in a village square, my wife there smelling of lavender and our own sweat,
“I chose my path, my dear friend Quc, so that there might be harmony.”
His kitchen was full of such smells that you knew you had to understand everything or you would be incomplete forever.
now at last I can see clearly—how thin the line is between ignorance and wisdom
