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“You smell bad, oun. How did I raise such a dirty daughter?”
Tevy’s philosophical interest in the man was sparked when her mother revealed that she knew, from only a glance, that he was Khmer.
“Nothing makes me feel more Khmer than the smell of fish sauce and fried dough!”
Tevy carries little guilt about her detachment from her culture.
You’re like this gross person who thinks her dad is hot,
Am I in love with Dad or do I, like, hate him? You are so stupid. I wasn’t saying the man was hot, anyway. I just pointed out that he’s not, like, ugly.”
Exhaustion grinds away at her bones. Her wrists rattle with carpal tunnel syndrome. And rest is not an option. If anything, it consumes more of her energy.
Tevy wonders if her mother has ever loved someone romantically, if her mother is even capable of reaching beyond the realm of survival,
She almost wants the man to be a hit man sent by the uncle so that she can direct him straight to her ex-husband.
“What’s the difference between a Chinese family living in Cambodia and a Khmer family living in Cambodia?” Tevy asks. “Aren’t they both still Cambodian? If they both speak Khmer, if they both survived the same experiences, if they both do the same things, wouldn’t that make a Chinese family living in Cambodia somewhat Cambodian?”
She remembers how in elementary school she always got so mad at the white kids who misidentified her as Chinese,
What concerns Tevy more is the validity of the idea that every Khmer woman—or just every woman—has to deal with someone like their father,
the miraculous day their eldest children could start chauffeuring around their youngest.
I mean, Model UN does have cute girls . . . girls that wear cute blazers . . . and know stuff about the world . . .”
our Hennessy-drenched uncles,
he lived with his mom, paid her jack shit in rent, and never did chores because he was too busy playing his video games.
apparently she’s not dead dead, anymore,
I’m a dead broom reincarnated into a human,
very cliché, in that gay sob story kind of way,
He’s the kind of guy who recites 50 Cent lyrics and loves Boyz n the Hood and 8 Mile even though he doesn’t—I suspect—get their political themes.
both of them have dead moms and shitty dads,
that chick’s wild, don’t-give-a-fuck look,
Ma has been a psycho since the genocide.
how men see her thick eyeliner and her fake nails,
nothing’s special about an adulthood spent in the asshole of California,
on this nightmare of a day, she can find solace in her boy toy’s tight body.
Maly’s dad proved just another fuck-off Cambodian man.
carne asada burrito—the California kind, stuffed with french fries—but
leaving the joint hanging from her mouth like a French girl in a Godard film,
She’ll pop from my vagina reeking of tiger balm,
“Even as a dead embryo, or even reincarnated, she’d haunt the fuck out of you.”
I understand how truly alone I am.
“Violence will not solve our problems, and neither will the model minority myth.”
with her Lexus and Omega watches and Louis Vuitton bags smelling of fresh leather, all of them so giant I swore they had gained consciousness and could swallow me whole,
You will marry a girl from Cambodia, a nice girl, a girl from a good family, a rich family, a princess from a rich family, and her parents will pay you fifty thousand, fifty thousand at least,
no girl’s gonna date a twenty-six-year-old guy still living at home!”
“Thai food is just bad Khmer food,”
I’m too white for the Mexicans and too Mexican for the whites,”
Paul was in love with Meryl, or thought he was, but liked fucking guys too much,
“You guys are so not Cambodian,” Dad said as he waved his hand. “You are not even Cambodian American! Durian is real, true Khmer food.”
“Ba, you gotta stop using the genocide to win arguments,”
the Cambo grandpas, who hate Hmong people for no legit reason.
Everyone snatched a bottle of leftover Hennessy,
“We’re named after Marlon Brando and James fucking Bond! Which, in fact—the logic’s so Cambodian it hurts: name your kids after the first movies you saw after immigrating,
our parents are hella petty,”
he has a Rolex, too, like a hard worker.”
He’d been thanking Buddha, as a joke, for all his fortunes,
nothing to do but go on bad Tinder dates to Chipotle!”
two bridesmaids bounced across the room handing servings of Hennessy to everyone
