Birds Of Paradise Lost Literary Analysis

Mingyang Chen

English 1B

Kella Svetich

January. 30 2016 “The Birds of Paradise Lost” By Andrew Lam In Birds of Paradise Lost by Andrew Lam, we are able to gain perspective on the sufferings of Vietnamese refugees. It provides a universal immigration experience as the reader is able to visualize the experiences that the refugees underwent during the fall of Saigon, which occurred in 1975. The ideas for writing the book was drawn from Lam’s childhood as he was brought up in an American Vietnamese community located in San Francisco. In the story”hunger,” the primary focus is on Nguyen as a character within the narration in “ Hunger” and his relation to one particular theme of interest, which is hunger. The theme of hunger and the theme of

After his wife’s tragic death, Nguyen is obligated to take care of his daughter, therefore, taking on a motherly and fatherly role. In its simplest definition, mothering can be described as the act of raising a child with affection and care. In the story, Nguyen becomes a mother to his daughter in the sense that he treats her with the most care and love. This is indicated in various parts of the story specifically when he is trying to convince her to have some of the sautéed pork he has cooked in caramelized sauce. He talks to his daughter very amiable and patient. This is depicted when he uses phrases like “eat, you must eat, for your Ba” (Lam 100). He is convincing her to eat meat to gain strength and grow healthy as the other children in the same age. An aspect of mothering is also observed when he tries to feed his daughter. Despite his efforts, she spits the meat out and instead of becoming angry and reprimanding her, as a father would, he resorts to continue begging her to eat her

It shows that he has not given up on her or run out of patience despite he uses his useless attempts to make her eat meat. His motherly nature is observed when he spoons another piece of pork and pretends that it is delicious. He speaks lovingly to his daughter, whom he has named Easy-to-Love, saying, “Please, Easy-to-Love, just chew like your Ba, like this, look.” (Lam 101). He then rubs his stomach to indicate that he truly appreciate the great taste of the food while making obligatory noises such as “hmm, hmm.” At this point, Nguyen demonstrates immense care to his daughter as he confidently mimics a happy fool after eating food, all in an attempt to ensure that his daughter feeds on the meat stew that he has