The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Thi Diem Thuy Le (English) Paperback Book

Description: The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Thi Diem Thuy Le The intertwining lives of members of a Vietnamese family in America are seen through the perceptive eyes of a young girl who describes how she, her father, and four "uncles" are rescued from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego and chronicles her reunion with other members of the family. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description The highly acclaimed novel that 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."A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating." —The New York Times Book Review 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 childs imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her fathers hopeless rage. Author Biography LÊ THI DIEM THÚY [pronounced LAY TEE YIM TWEE] born in Phan Thiet, southern Vietnam. She and her father left Vietnam in 1978, by boat, eventually settling in Southern California. Lê is currently a Radcliffe Fellow and resides in western Massachusetts. Review "A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.... As vivid as a fairy tale, as allusive as a poem." The New York Times Book Review "Breathtaking.... Flows in luminous paragraphs that mingle past and present, creating a fluid sense of time." —Vogue "Slender and elegant.... A beautifully rendered description of the personal, psychological and historical threads that link father to daughter." —Los Angeles Times Book Review "Lê captures the magical thinking of childhood with its shifting awareness of the wonders and apprehensions of life." —Village Voice Literary Supplement Review Quote "A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.... As vivid as a fairy tale, as allusive as a poem." The New York Times Book Review "Breathtaking.... Flows in luminous paragraphs that mingle past and present, creating a fluid sense of time." -- Vogue "Slender and elegant.... A beautifully rendered description of the personal, psychological and historical threads that link father to daughter." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review "L Excerpt from Book suh-top! Linda Vista, with its rows of yellow houses, is where we eventually washed to shore. Before Linda Vista, we lived in the Green Apartment on Thirtieth and Adams, in Normal Heights. Before the Green Apartment, we lived in the Red Apartment on Forty-ninth and Orange, in East San Diego. Before the Red Apartment we werent a family like we are a family now. We were in separate places, waiting for each other. Ma was standing on a beach in Vietnam while Ba and I were in California with four men who had escaped with us on the same boat. Ba and I were connected to the four uncles, not by blood but by water. The six of us had stepped into the South China Sea together. Along with other people from our village, we floated across the sea, first in the hold of the fishing boat, and then in the hold of a U.S. Navy ship. At the refugee camp in Singapore, we slept on beds side by side and when our papers were processed and stamped, we packed our few possessions and left the camp together. We entered the revolving doors of airports and boarded plane after plane. We were lifted high over the Pacific Ocean. Holding on to one another, we moved through clouds, ghost vapors, time zones. On the other side, we walked through a light rain and climbed into a car together. We were carried through unfamiliar brightly lit streets, and delivered to the sidewalk in front of a darkened house whose door we entered, after climbing five uneven steps together in what had become pouring rain. In 1978, an elderly couple in San Diego decided to sponsor, through their church group, five young Vietnamese men and one six-year-old girl from a refugee camp in Singapore. Mr. Russell was a retired Navy man. He had once been stationed in the Pacific and remembered the people there as being small and kind. When Mr. Russell heard about the Vietnamese boat people, he spent many sleepless nights staring at the ceiling and thinking about the nameless, faceless bodies lying in small boats, floating on the open water. In Mr. Russells mind, the Vietnamese boat people merged with his memories of the Okinawans and the Samoans and even the Hawaiians. One night, Mr. Russell fell asleep and dreamed that the boats were seabirds sitting on the waves. He saw a hand scoop the birds up from the water. It was not his hand and it was not the hand of God. The birds went flying in all directions across the blinding blue sky of Mr. Russells dream, but finally he saw them fly in only one direction and that was toward the point where in the dream he understood himself to be waiting, somewhere beyond the frame. The original plan was that my father, the four uncles and I would live with the elderly couple, but as our papers were being processed Mr. Russell died and there was some question as to where we would be sent. Tokyo? Sydney? Minneapolis? Mr. Russell had told Mrs. Russell his dream about the birds. After his death, she considered the dream and decided that we should move in with their son, Melvin. Ba said it was no ones fault that we lasted only one season at Mels place. When Mel approached us at the airport, we heard a faint rattling: a ring full of gold and silver keys hang- ing from his belt. With each step Mel took, the ring swung and rattled by his side. The keys were new to him. Mel was tall and thin, but the ring looked fat, important. Mel caught the ring and pushed it into his pocket. This silenced the keys for a moment. He shook everyones hand--including mine--and laughing nervously said, "Welcome to America." He then waved his hand in the air and when I followed it with my eyes, I saw a poster of a man and a woman at the beach, lying on striped towels, sunning themselves between two tall palm trees. Above the palm trees were large block letters that looked like they were on fire: SUNNY SAN DIEGO. The man was lying on his stomach, his face buried in his folded arms. The woman was lying on her back, with one leg down and the other leg up, bent at the knee. I looked through the triangle formed by the womans tanned knee, calf and thigh and saw the calm, sleeping waves of the ocean. My mother was out there somewhere. My father had said so. After Mel and his mother took us to the room in Mels house where Ba, the four uncles and I would all be sleeping, they wished us goodnight and left us alone, closing the door quietly behind them. They stood in the hallway and we could hear them talking. Even without understanding a word of what they were saying, the tone of their voices troubled us. Had we been able to understand, we might have heard the following: "I feel like Ive inherited a boatload of people. I mean, Ive been living here alone and now Ive got five men Ive never met before, and what about that little girl?" "Dear, you know your father wanted them here." "Here in America, sure, but not here with me." "Well, its worked out that way. If your father were here--" The woman started to cry. "Im sorry, Mother. Im so sorry." We heard their footsteps move down the hallway toward the living room. Inside the bedroom, we all remained quiet in our places. Ba was standing with his back against the door. The four men were sitting on the two bunk beds and I was sitting on the double bed, my knees pulled up near my chest. One of the 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 wouldnt get the covers dirty. Ba stepped forward and explained to the four men and me that Mel had bought our way into the United States. He said that Mel was a good man. We heard without really listening. We nodded. Ba said that Mel had let the people at the airport gates know that it was O.K. for us to be here. "If it wasnt for him," Ba said, "they would have sent us back the way we came." We each thought of those long nights floating on the ocean, rocking back and forth in the middle of nowhere with nothing in sight. We remembered the ships that kept their distance. We remembered the people leaning over the decks of the ships to study us through their binoculars and not liking what they saw, turning away from our boat. If it was true that this man Mel could keep us from floating back there--to those salt-filled nights--what could we do but thank him. And then thank him again. Only why did it seem from the tones of the voices in the hallway as if something was wrong? Ba said that we had to be patient. Two of the uncles nodded. One closed his eyes. One lay down and turned toward the wall. 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. Ba said whatever we might come to think of Mel, we should always remember that he opened a door for us and that this was an important thing to remember. There were things about us Mel never knew or remembered. He didnt remember that we hadnt come running through the door he opened but, rather, had walked, keeping close together and moving very slowly, as people often do when they have no idea what theyre walking toward or what theyre walking from. And he never knew that during our first night in America, as he and his mother sat on the living room couch holding on to each other and crying because Mr. Russell was gone, Ba had climbed out the bedroom window and was sitting in the shadow of the palm trees on the front lawn of the house, staring at the moon like a lost dog, and also crying. . . . The ring of gold and silver keys that rattled beside Mel opened the doors to condominiums, duplexes, and town houses in various states of neglect. Mel was not good with tools and, since a bicycle accident in early childhood, was generally rather fearful, a fact that had always pained him, especially around his father. In exchange for letting us live with him--an arrangement he reluctantly agreed to, to satisfy what his mother called his fathers "dying wish"--Mel employed Ba and the four uncles as his crew of house painters and general maintenance men. He was relieved not to have to climb shaky ladders or crawl through dark, narrow spaces to see about small broken things. When the white walls in one of his properties had faded or become dirty with the grubby prints of peoples lives rubbing up against them, he sent Ba and the four uncles in with directions to "touch them up," "make like new," "make white again." On almost every day of the week, you could find them working: five small-boned Vietnamese men climbing ladders in empty rooms, painting the white walls whiter. "So much white is unlucky." "Layers of white bury you." "In between the first coat and the third--" "Death could slip in and--" "Press you up against the wall and--" "Wrap you up in coats of white." "Dressing you for your own funeral." . . . Of all the men, Ba knew the most English; he had picked some up from the Americans during the war. The uncles asked Ba to ask Mel why the walls had to be so white. Ba didnt know the word "so." His question came out like this: "Why white?" Mel said, "Its clean." That was the end of the conversation. When Ba told the uncles what Mel had said, they stared at him blankly. "No," they said, turning to the white walls. "We dont understand." They picked up their paintbrushes and rollers and rags and went back to work. Ba tried to tell them again Details ISBN0375700021 Author Thi Diem Thuy Le Short Title GANGSTER WE ARE ALL LOOKING FO Pages 176 Language English ISBN-10 0375700021 ISBN-13 9780375700026 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 813.6 Year 2004 DOI 10.1604/9780375700026 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2004-05-11 NZ Release Date 2004-05-11 US Release Date 2004-05-11 UK Release Date 2004-05-11 Publisher Random House USA Inc Publication Date 2004-05-11 Audience General Imprint Vintage Books We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. 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