The Happiest Refugee Book Report

Anh Do has experienced a great deal of adversity throughout his life, but through this he has had immense help from his family and friends to help him become the man he is today. The Happiest Refugee written by Anh Do, shows the importance of friends and family. The book provides the viewers with a serious yet humorous recount on the hard journeys Anh and his family had faced, such as being trapped on a small boat full of people which took them away from Vietnam while doing this being robbed of their belongings. Through the book it is strongly shown that family is important and should be number one priority and should be loving and supporting of each other regardless of the situation. The main examples to be explored are when Anhs father helped Anhs mother start the clothing business, when Anh got a job to support his at the time single mother, and the fact that Anh’s father always made time to show and teach the children life lessons.

Throughout Anh’s book it shows the importance of family specifically when his father helped his mother to start a clothing business.

She started this business as when the family first moved to Australia they had no means of earning money so they decided to start making clothes to sell to support the family. Anh’s father was very supportive of her decision, and soon other family members joined in to help out. Evidence of this can be found in chapter 3, on page 38 “Dad left the factory and started making clothes with mum”, and “soon we had three uncles, four aunties and several distant cousins helping out, and we were running our own business”. Through starting this clothing business and having lots of support from others the Do family was able to make a living for themselves. Through the tremendous amount of support given by Anh’s father and other family members, the importance of family, their support and sacrifices for each other is

shown.
When Anh’s newly single mother was left struggling, trying to provide food and a roof over her children’s heads, Anh saw his mother’s hardship and took on the responsibility to get a part time job to support his mother in this difficult situation. He applied to deliver papers to the neighbourhood, not even thinking how tough it could get trying to deal with schooling and life in general but he did not care as he wanted to prove he can provide for the family and be the man of the house now that she was single. Examples of this are found in chapter 7 on page 94. “I’m going to help you out mum. I got a job!” Anh failed to deliver to deliver all of the papers on his own so his mother said “That’s alright, we’ll finish it tomorrow. It’ll be a day late but once you start a job you’ve got to finish it. I’ll help you” found in chapter 7 page 95. After doing his first round of the job he realised that it was too hard to achieve without extra help from family “It was way past Tram’s bedtime and I realised that this job was just too much work— id never intended for my whole family to have to labour with me; the idea was for mum to work less” stated Anh found on page 95. This shows that families should always be there for each family member no matter the circumstance.
Throughout the whole of then novel it is evidential shown how important family is. Anh’s family are extremely loving and supportive of each other and never hold grudges against one another for doing the incorrect things. Whether it would be helping each other start a business, helping with financial issues or teaching important life lessons to ensure they lived a better future, there were always there for one another. The book sums up that families should be loving, caring and always show support for each other no matter the decision being made.