cards are here
Written by a vietnamese author Lê Thị Diễm Thúy
The story is told through the voice of an immigrant girl, and the author switches tenses (past and present back and forth) to create an anachronistic prose. She’s heavily utilises descriptive sentences and vivid imagery in order to provoke thought in the reader, and make them contemplate their own experiences similar to those told in the novel.
That, in essence, is what I believe makes the book so unique. The novel doesn’t follow a traditional plot structure, rather its a fragmented and fluid story. I don’t believe the author’s intention WAS to tell a story, but rather to kindle internal reflection in the reader.
Another thing I noticed throughout the book is a constant changes in tone. It typically starts with a pleasant memory, and then concludes with how the object of the memory has become tarnished over time. From Nina Coomes, “‘Setsunai’ implies something once bright, now faded. It is the painful twinge at the edge of a memory, the joy in the knowledge that everything is temporary.”
I think this term is a perfect embodiment of the feeling the author tries to provoke in the reader.
Water is a prominent motif throughout the story, as it represents a connection to her previous life and home. Her brother died of drowning, and her home town in Vietnam was a fishing village. The pool she had in her apartment complex is a connection to her past life, and although she mentioned she swam all the ime in her hometown, her parents never let her swim in the pool. Throughout the book, water is a symbol for death (in particular her brothers death), and its very fitting that the book concludes with her ressurecting the memory and image of her brother by uncontrollably running back into the ocean.
Perhaps the most tension in the book is created by the father-daughter relationship, and the internal wars the father was fighting against himself. The “gangster” is a symbol for her fathers internal fortitude and fight.
Ba and I were connected to the four uncles, not by blood but by water
Above the palm trees were large block letters that looked like they were on fire: SUNNY SAN DIEGO
I looked through the triangle formed by the woman’s tanned knee, calf and thigh and saw the calm, sleeping waves of the ocean. My mother was out there somwehere. My father had said so
One of my uncles took a deep breath and lay down on the bed. He was still wearing his shoes and let his feet hang off the edge of the bed so he wouldn’t get the covers dirty (7).
I wrapped my arms around my knees and studied my bare feet. They were very clean; not a speck of sand or salt on them. (8)
Perhaps she sensed we’d once had a woman in our lives (12)
In this photograph, my Ba and I hold hands and lean against the blue car…, waiting for the flash that lets us know something has happened… something that makes it remember us, remember ou faces, remember our clothes, remember the blurrred shape of our hands captured in that second when we shivered, waiting. (13)
Ever since my brother left, I’ve had a hard time taking naps. (20)
I began to play with the ceiling, a game that I used to play with the sky when I was lying in the fishing boat on the sea. At that time, I thought that everyone and every-thing I missed was hovering behind the sky. (21)
As the butterfly is trapped inside of its glass confinement, there is something trapped inside of her (this will become symbol)
When I went into Mel’s office, I would open the glass doors of the cabinet and leave them open so the animals could get some air (28)
I told the glass animals about… (29)
One Friday afternoon in December, a week before Christmas vacation, I tried to free the butterfly. The result was Mel told Ba, the four uncles and me to pack our things and get out. (31)
I spun myself dizzy trying to remember what Ma’s face looked like in my dream (32)
There, very faintly, was the sound. It was like a light, almost transparent, curtain rippling across a window (34)
Years ago, that house, like many on the block, had begun as something pretty, with yellow curtains in the windows and flowering bushes out front. Had they been roses? It was so long ago. Now the house was nothing more than a shell. (41)
That summer, with my parents asleep in the bed next to mine, my father lying on his back, his breathing like a whistle, my mother lying on her side, one arm thrown across his chest and her long hair fanning out behind her, I’d lie awake and think about thinks. (45)
And she would draw out the words ‘long time ago’ so that they sounded like three stones, one following another, down into a well. (48)
The youngest kids had a hard time dying. We had to explain to them that when they were out: they couldn’t just open their eyes and keep on fighting (50)
Though my parents didn’t want me playing near the swimming pool (51)
Describes how the everyone had so much fun in the pool, and right after it was destroyed by the landlord. Setsunai
The description of the couple that previously owns the house is interesting.
When Ma first arrived in Amewrica, she had very long hair. It didn’t flow to her feet but it was thick and straight and black and you could grab it by the fistful and hold it to your face. After she cut it that summer, she looked more like the women who read the news on TV. (67)
That summer, he’d stand in the doorway of our apartent and stare at the concrete courtyard. ‘It may be time to move,’ he’d say. Shaking his head he’d tell my mother and me taht when they drained the pool, they should have filled it with soil (69)
While I slept, the sky would be dark as the back of a woman’s long head of hair and all the stars would be the small white flowers she was wearing in it. (71)
The passage about the bum is interesting. Nothing to do and nowhere to go.
Her father chased her out of the house, beating her with the same broom she had used every day of here life, from the time she could stand up and sweep until that very morning that she was chased away. (79)
She mentions how happy the metal tube outside the playground was, with kids playing, secrets telling. Then cuts to it being the arm of a dying giant, and relating that to a napalm bombing. setsunai
I see his hands punch hands punch hands punch blood
She sends them out like birds gliding through the sky with nowhere in particular to go. Until they crash.
When I grow up I am going to be the gangster we are all looking for
Talks about good memories of her father “my young father lifting me in his arms”, and then cuts to “I am on my feet again, watching my father leave”
As evening approached, they talked about heat as some-thing that was in the past, as well as certain fruits
Like a blind man circling a small room, searching for but always missing the door that led to the hallway, the streets, the open air
He had planted the desert rose three years before and was happy to see it was now beginning to bud… He picked dead leaves from the jasmine plants
It’s simple but deep meaning descriptions like the star game with her grandpa that are interesting.
What my brother found funnier than anything else was when one of the women said…