The Gangster We Are All Looking For By Lê Thi Diem Thúy

The Gangster We Are All Looking For, written by Lê Thi Diem Thúy, tells the story of a young Vietnamese girl, who remains nameless, as she immigrates to America with her family and her inner struggle to adjust into the American lifestyle. The young girl, who serves as the narrator, tells the story of her assimilation in a rather random sequence as if telling fragments of her memory. She tells her stories of her past in Vietnam, her living conditions in America, and even goes back to explain events that occurred before her birth; with the time and setting constantly switching between America and Vietnam. When the book starts off, the narrator is just six years old, but the reader is able to see her progress into a grow lady as the novel unfolds.

The author not only emotionally depicts the young narrator as struggling with her identity, from acknowledging the cultural differences and coping with the various losses in her life, she also does so in a manner that is relatable to other young first generation immigration assimilating to American society. Furthermore, I appreciate how Lê Thi Diem Thúy makes note of the narrator’s innocence, constantly using her imagination as a means of escape and understanding her new home, while also haunted with trauma from her past of Vietnam and her family’s history. As stated in page 87, the narrator was breathing in war and Ma is never able to “never it out” of her, meaning war will always be with the young narrator- even after the war, she still suffers. The novel is also heavily layered with the symbolic use of water. As stated in the novel before the story begins, “In Vietnamese, the word for water and the word for a nation, a country, and a homeland are one and the same: nu’ó’c.” The use of water is used in every chapter. In “Suh-top,” the narrator often asks about the beach, where she asks about her mother back at the beach in Vietnam; and she thinks about the ocean water during naptime in class. Additionally, it is where the narrator, Ba, and the uncles journeyed on a small fishing boat to America. Mr. Russell’s dream also involved the ocean. In “Palm,” he mother is frustrated that the landlord emptied out the pool and filled it with rocks and cement, ruining her view and thus, a connection to their homeland, Vietnam. In “The Gangster We Are All Looking For,” the pieces of murdered woman’s body is thrown and arrived onshore. In “The Bones of Birds,” it is mentioned that the United States Naval ship picked them up from their fishing boat. Finally, in “Nu’ó’c,” the narrator’s older brother dies at sea and her grandfather says that the