Speaker 1: Hey, this is Adding and Samantha and welcome to stuff.
Speaker 1: I'll never told you a protection of iHeartRadio. And I
Speaker 1: guess before we get into this quick content warning, we
Speaker 1: are going to be talking about death and grief things
Speaker 1: like that, but nothing to in depth. Today we are
Speaker 1: talking about the two thousand and three book The Gangster
Speaker 1: We Are All Looking For by Vietnamese American author Leam Twee.
Speaker 1: It is a short, fragmented piece told by an unnamed
Speaker 1: narrator who immigrated from Vietnam to America as a child.
Speaker 1: The locations and times jump around, largely taking place in
Speaker 1: Vietnam and America. The age of the narrator ranges from
Speaker 1: six to twenty six, and she grapples with things like identity, war, immigration, loss,
Speaker 1: puberty and PTSD, her and her parents, everybody around your
Speaker 1: kind of mainly then. The fragmented nature of the book
Speaker 1: is meant to resemble what happens to memory during a
Speaker 1: traumatic event, including the repression of her brother's death. It
Speaker 1: is a very poetic and symbolic book. A lot of
Speaker 1: people describe it as almost your more reading poetry. Here's
Speaker 1: a note from the author in nineteen seventy eight, my
Speaker 1: father and I left Vietnam by boat on board the
Speaker 1: US Navy ship that picked us up. My father incorrectly
Speaker 1: filled out the paperwork identifying me. He listed my name
Speaker 1: as Twee and my date of birth as January fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. He claims he never chose my formal name,
Speaker 1: and shugart the shoulders who could fault him for forgetting
Speaker 1: My mother arrived two years later and informed us that
Speaker 1: Bab had been wrong on both counts. She corrected my
Speaker 1: date of birth it was now January twelfth, nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: but insisted I keep the name Tweet. My older sister,
Speaker 1: the original Tweet had drowned at a refugee camp in Malaysia.
Speaker 1: My mother saw my father's mistake as propitious. It allowed
Speaker 1: a part of my older sister to come to this
Speaker 1: country with us, and so I kept my sister's name
Speaker 1: and wore it like a borrowed garment, one in which
Speaker 1: my mother crowded two daughters, one dead and one living.
Speaker 1: When I decided to publish under my full name in
Speaker 1: the Vietnamese fashion and all in lawer case because I
Speaker 1: prefer the way it runs, I knew that both Americans
Speaker 1: and Vietnamese may find fault with it. It is not
Speaker 1: how names go in either country. Nonetheless, it felt right
Speaker 1: to me I had finally managed to break the name down,
Speaker 1: rebuild it, and reclaim it as my own. So if
Speaker 1: you have read the book, then a lot of this
Speaker 1: is going to sound familiar. So it's not autobiographical, but
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of similarities to this story and
Speaker 1: it is a sman that I were discussing it off
Speaker 1: Mike right before. It is sort of hard to pin
Speaker 1: down because it is kind of like poetry and it
Speaker 1: does jump around a lot. So the plot is essentially
Speaker 1: you have this narrator, a named narrator, young girl who
Speaker 1: immigrates via boat from Vietnam to America, loses her brother,
Speaker 1: and then has these memories that stand out. As I said,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to represent like a traumatic or some kind
Speaker 1: of memory that just stands out when you look back
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. And it's exploring that and exploring her
Speaker 1: trying to grapple with the PTSD and her father's PTSD,
Speaker 1: her mother's PTSD and figure things out and just having
Speaker 1: a lot of questions and a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of feelings that she's not sure what to do with
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, that's essentially essentially the plot. So
Speaker 1: if we move into the themes, a big one is
Speaker 1: obviously immigration and identity. Here's the quote. We each thought
Speaker 1: of those long nights floating on the ocean, rocking back
Speaker 1: and forth in the middle of nowhere, with nothing in sight.
Speaker 1: We remembered the ships that kept their distance. We remembered
Speaker 1: the people leaning over the decks of the ships to
Speaker 1: study us through their binoculars, and not liking what they saw,
Speaker 1: turning away from our boat.
Speaker 2: And then another one. I was the only Vietnamese student
Speaker 2: at my school. On the first day of class, the
Speaker 2: teacher introduced me to the other students by holding a
Speaker 2: globe in one hand as she gave it a spin
Speaker 2: with the other, and then pointing her finger at an
Speaker 2: S shaped curve near a body of water. Was that
Speaker 2: where I'd come from? As I stood before them in
Speaker 2: a dress the color of an Easter egg, with my
Speaker 2: feet encased in clear plastic sandals, the other students looked
Speaker 2: at the globe and then back at me again. Some
Speaker 2: whispered behind their hands, some just stared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so again, she's not She's kind of plays feels
Speaker 1: kind of about of place right in this a whole
Speaker 1: situation in the because they first arrived at this guy
Speaker 1: named Mel's house and he never really agreed to take
Speaker 1: them in, but someone in his family did. His father, Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he was like, okay, I'll take them in. And
Speaker 1: but it was a very much like it was not
Speaker 1: in his the cards that he was expecting, right, and
Speaker 1: he his mother was there, right, and she was the
Speaker 1: one that put put her in the like easter dress
Speaker 1: and the sandals.
Speaker 3: And she was her little doll.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was kind of dress, yes, But the narrator
Speaker 1: there was this like glass case of figurines in Mel's
Speaker 1: office or like in his his space. But there was
Speaker 1: also this like glass paperweight. It sounds like to me.
Speaker 2: Like that's like like we've all seen it if you've
Speaker 2: come from the nineties, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, like a kind of a glass yeah,
Speaker 1: with a butterfly in it. And she, the narrator, was
Speaker 1: just so concerned about this butterfly and felt like she
Speaker 1: could hear it and that it was alive in there
Speaker 1: and it was trapped in there, and she wanted to
Speaker 1: let it out. And everybody was kind of treating her
Speaker 1: like you know, your young girl like, no, it's not.
Speaker 1: But eventually it built up and she grabbed it and
Speaker 1: threw it and broke the glass case with all of
Speaker 1: the glass figurines in it in an attempt to free
Speaker 1: the butterfly. And this is when Mel kicked them all out.
Speaker 2: Nope, right, because that was the only rule in the house.
Speaker 2: Essential Well, there's a lot of rules, but the biggest
Speaker 2: rule is don't touch these things because it had been
Speaker 2: given from his father. And so both the mother and
Speaker 2: Mel were very very sentimental about these things. I'm assuming
Speaker 2: it was worth some money, maybe not already, just really
Speaker 2: loved it because the father. It was an interesting beginning
Speaker 2: with the father, the portrayal of the father who had
Speaker 2: a dream about saving the people of Vietnam because he
Speaker 2: was a veteran I think, yeah, who would serve there
Speaker 2: and had been cared for there by the people quote unquote,
Speaker 2: and so he wanted to rescue these people.
Speaker 3: That was his calling from a dream that he had supposedly.
Speaker 1: Right, right, And this is this is one of those
Speaker 1: things that when you get to the end, one of
Speaker 1: those books that when you get to the end, you're like, oh, okay.
Speaker 1: But once I got to the end, I was she
Speaker 1: was thinking, this is her brother like trapped in the glass.
Speaker 1: This is like the memory of her rather trapped in
Speaker 1: the glass, and that's why she felt like she could hear,
Speaker 1: and she felt like it was she could just free
Speaker 1: this butterfly, right, it would be alive.
Speaker 2: I think with all of that, I found that interesting
Speaker 2: and we don't talk about it at the beginning scene,
Speaker 2: and I I do relate to this because I have
Speaker 2: a very vivid picture of myself in her memory of
Speaker 2: arriving in the airport, not knowing English, being with nobody
Speaker 2: that I knew, just kind of showing.
Speaker 3: Up waiting to be picked up.
Speaker 2: And essentially that's what the experience happens for herself and
Speaker 2: the four other men in MA and they are waiting
Speaker 2: to be picked up, not realizing the person who had
Speaker 2: sponsored them essentially had died and he was being they
Speaker 2: were picked up by another dude who really obviously did
Speaker 2: not want them. And the fact that I think they
Speaker 2: the people who were picking them up, the mother especially
Speaker 2: was thinking she was gonna get a reception of love
Speaker 2: and thankfulness instead, like they were scared and confused more
Speaker 2: than anything else, and that level of like what do.
Speaker 3: We do who are you?
Speaker 1: Do?
Speaker 3: We trust you? Do you trust us?
Speaker 2: And that level of like being a burden and being
Speaker 2: seen as a burden and realizing there a burden without
Speaker 2: even knowing the language. Like it was very reminiscent like
Speaker 2: at that immigration stage of like, yeah, okay, this is
Speaker 2: our status.
Speaker 3: Here, this is our status.
Speaker 2: And I think it was a very telling beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, here is another quote, and this one I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not sure where to put it, but
Speaker 1: I just thought it was interesting because it's kind of
Speaker 1: about like all of these warnings that summer, as I
Speaker 1: sat with her while she worked, she would issue her
Speaker 1: warnings about the pool. She told me, look at you,
Speaker 1: you're as small as a mouse. The water is much
Speaker 1: deeper than you think. About cars, she said, they can
Speaker 1: hit you and keep going. About the needle on her
Speaker 1: sewing machine, she said, watch your fingers. It can move
Speaker 1: much faster than you can run. And about boys, she warned,
Speaker 1: they will try to press you into it. So this
Speaker 1: is when they moved to the next place and it
Speaker 1: has pool and water. We're gonna talk about this at
Speaker 1: the end, but water is a huge theme right throughout
Speaker 1: this whole thing, and this pool was very big thing.
Speaker 3: The Vietnamese word for water.
Speaker 2: It was very similar to the Korean word for water
Speaker 2: more that's the Korean word, And I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: because that's it's like there's a heaviness about it, taking you,
Speaker 2: taking you, taking your life, but taking you places too,
Speaker 2: and being lost in it. That's very, very deep into
Speaker 2: that that they were talking about from jump, them arriving
Speaker 2: from the water and the fact that her parents were
Speaker 2: still in the water, and she didn't know what that meant,
Speaker 2: but it was giant mm hmm. So here's another quote.
Speaker 2: We tumble out the window like people tumbling a continents.
Speaker 2: We are time traveling, weighed down by heavy furniture and
Speaker 2: bags of precious junk. We find ourselves against Boss yellow truck.
Speaker 2: Ma calls his name, her voice reaching like a hand
Speaker 2: feeling for a tree trunk and darkness and the car.
Speaker 2: Ma starts to cry. What about the sea? She asks,
Speaker 2: what about the garden? Boss says we can come back
Speaker 2: in the morning and dig up the stalks of lemon
Speaker 2: grass and fold the sea into a blue square. My sobbing.
Speaker 2: She is beating the dashboard with her fists. I want
Speaker 2: to know, she says, I want to know I want
Speaker 2: to know who is doing this to us? Hiccupping, She says,
Speaker 2: I want to know why why there's always a fence.
Speaker 2: Why there's always someone on the outside wanting someone something
Speaker 2: on the inside and between them this sharp fence. We
Speaker 2: are always leaving like this. And this is where I
Speaker 2: got kind of confused, y'all, because she talks about leaving
Speaker 2: her parents behind in the attic, and I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: was her parents in the attic because there is like
Speaker 2: a moment of conversations where they're prepping for the parents
Speaker 2: to come, and then then a lot of confusion from me.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, well they had to, as this quote tells you,
Speaker 1: they had to leave kind of quickly because they just
Speaker 1: got an eviction notice that was like, hey, we're gonna
Speaker 1: break down, We're going to tear down all of this.
Speaker 1: And this was after they filled in the pool, right,
Speaker 1: and we'll rebuild it and you'll be the first on
Speaker 1: our list when it's up and running again. But they
Speaker 1: just had to They had to leave and steal essentially
Speaker 1: their own stuff, write it out. So it happened very quickly,
Speaker 1: and I mean my interpretation was that the parents had
Speaker 1: not shown up yet, that they were just preparing for them,
Speaker 1: and then they had to leave really quickly, and that's
Speaker 1: why part of the devastation was, well, they're going somewhere
Speaker 1: else now, or how we're going to tell them? How
Speaker 1: will they know?
Speaker 2: One of your theories apparently that I just read, as
Speaker 2: Riswega says at the end, the mother calls out of
Speaker 2: her for her parents, which you've forgotten. This has a
Speaker 2: double meaning. She's calling for her home in Vietnam to
Speaker 2: return to Vietnam, as well as a photograph she's forgotten
Speaker 2: at her Linda Vista home. So it's literal too, Okay,
Speaker 2: So that's where I missed that one. But yeah, it's
Speaker 2: because that's the entirety of the book, y'all. There's double meaning,
Speaker 2: if not triple or like quadriple meaning, which is kind
Speaker 2: of the poetic to it of like oh the deeper,
Speaker 2: the depth that this is probably one of those very
Speaker 2: short books that if you read it three or four
Speaker 2: different times, you're going to find three or four different things,
Speaker 2: like different meanings. Yes, which is beautiful and very very
Speaker 2: intelligent that I apparently is not in my house.
Speaker 1: Well, we were talking about this too, because you usually
Speaker 1: listen audio and I read it with my eyes dress.
Speaker 1: But there are and we were talking about this too,
Speaker 1: of their own book. There are some books that are
Speaker 1: just better. It's it's easier to like keep track of
Speaker 1: the thread if you're reading it, and some it's better
Speaker 1: to do it the audio. But this one I did
Speaker 1: have the thought when I was reading, I was like, oh, bit,
Speaker 1: that's jumping around. You might be a little bit confused about.
Speaker 4: The story because it also has a picture, the photograph
Speaker 4: in it, which is a big part of it, and
Speaker 4: the story of like how.
Speaker 1: The mother and father got together. That's where the title
Speaker 1: comes from. At least again, as you said, there's like
Speaker 1: multiple meanings, right, that is what because the dad it's
Speaker 1: like a the gangster we were looking for. He was
Speaker 1: a gangster right from North Korea. And she was like
Speaker 1: a Catholic girl, so her parents did not approve at all.
Speaker 1: Here's another quote. Mass has wars a bird with a
Speaker 1: broken wing flying over the countryside, trailing blood and burying
Speaker 1: crops and sorrow. If something grows in spite of this,
Speaker 1: it is both a curse and a miracle. When I
Speaker 1: was born, she cried to know that it was war
Speaker 1: I was breathing in and she could never shake it
Speaker 1: out of me. Ma says war makes it dangerous to breathe,
Speaker 1: though she knows you die if you don't. She says,
Speaker 1: she could have thrown me against the wall until I
Speaker 1: broke or coughed up this war that is killing us all.
Speaker 1: She could have stomped on it in the dark and
Speaker 1: danced on it like a mad woman dancing on gravestones.
Speaker 1: She could have grounded down to powder and spat on it,
Speaker 1: but didn't. I know. War has no beginning and no end.
Speaker 1: It crosses oceans like a splintered boat filled with people
Speaker 1: singing a sad song. And that is a big piece
Speaker 1: of this too, is the family aspect, and also the
Speaker 1: trauma and the PTSD aspect, as we have been saying,
Speaker 1: because the the way that it manifests in the different
Speaker 1: characters is different, but it is very clear, like the
Speaker 1: father figure is like an angry alcoholic essentially. The narrator,
Speaker 1: as I've said, is having flashbacks, although she's not really
Speaker 1: sure that she's having them. She's just having these like
Speaker 1: emotions and memories come back based on certain sensations. One
Speaker 1: of them is there's a scene where she goes to
Speaker 1: get a bag of ice and she just carries it
Speaker 1: in her arms, and she has something akin to a
Speaker 1: panic attack because her fingers kind of get wrinkly and
Speaker 1: she's cold, and it reminds her in some way of
Speaker 1: her brother being dead in the water, and that that's
Speaker 1: probably his fingers looked like. Also, a lot of the
Speaker 1: relationships are just really tense, a lot of unresolved issues
Speaker 1: for sure. But again going back to the title, there
Speaker 1: is a pretty strong father daughter relationship happening in here.
Speaker 1: He's the one that carried her to the boat. She
Speaker 1: wanted to be like him. He is the gangster they
Speaker 1: are looking for. It's interesting because she does see a
Speaker 1: lot of his faults, but I guess she almost sees
Speaker 1: them as like a strength. It's interesting the way she looks,
Speaker 1: she looks up to him and looks at him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: he was the one that was there and carried her
Speaker 1: in the boat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. She even says at one point, I want to
Speaker 2: be the gangster we are all looking for, like implying
Speaker 2: she wants to be like him. You know, even when
Speaker 2: like the abusive situations happened, she still realizes that he
Speaker 2: carried the family essentially in so many ways. And the
Speaker 2: scenes that we have of just him and his wife
Speaker 2: her her father and mother are really sweet, interestingly a
Speaker 2: contrast to what she remembers from him and why she
Speaker 2: stays away from him, right, But the way he cares
Speaker 2: for her, and like the whole scene where he talks
Speaker 2: about the news anchor said that we're going to get
Speaker 2: this feast and we're going to cook this and she
Speaker 2: he was talking about her being a cook, the mother
Speaker 2: being the cook, and him being a gardener at that point,
Speaker 2: and she was like, oh, really, who's cooking this? And
Speaker 2: he goes, I guess the gardener's implying that he would
Speaker 2: feed her and help her. So it was interesting. It
Speaker 2: was an interesting like flip, yeah, and how she saw
Speaker 2: him in the youth and how the the father saw
Speaker 2: him to the these scenes of him caring for her.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, and they did have they were They would
Speaker 1: fight like her parents would fight, but they always seemed
Speaker 1: to kind of come back together. It was interesting, definitely, Okay,
Speaker 1: and that I thought the mom was cheating at one point,
Speaker 1: right because there was another guy at the movie theater
Speaker 1: and I was like, Oh, I don't know which, I guess.
Speaker 1: Speaking of adolescence and love is the theme in here.
Speaker 1: Here's a quote. In the early days of my parents' courtship,
Speaker 1: my mother told stories. She confessed elaborate dreams about the
Speaker 1: end of war. Food she'd eat, a banquet table, mangoes
Speaker 1: piled to the ceiling. Songs she'd make up and sing,
Speaker 1: clapping her hands her head and throwing her hair like
Speaker 1: a horse's mane. Dances. She dance, hopping from one foot
Speaker 1: to the other. Unlike the responsible, favorite daughter or sister
Speaker 1: she was to her family with my father in the forest,
Speaker 1: my mother became reckless, drunk on her youth and the
Speaker 1: possibilities of love, ignoring the chores to be done at home.
Speaker 1: She rolled her pants up to her knees, stuck her
Speaker 1: bare feet in puddles, and learned to smoke a cigarette.
Speaker 3: She rebelled bit a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the scene that we get is she see
Speaker 2: someone that she hadn't seen in years, like her It
Speaker 2: seems like maybe her first love. But it also coincides
Speaker 2: with the author talking about her first contact with a
Speaker 2: young boy, So it kind of like that melding of
Speaker 2: realizing what her mother was doing and what she was
Speaker 2: doing as well, and her first experience with love and lust.
Speaker 2: And here's another quote, the barbed wire gates open, and
Speaker 2: she crosses through to him, arrives warm, the slightest film
Speaker 2: of sweat on her bare arms. To his disbelieving eyes,
Speaker 2: she says, it's me. It's me, shy and formal and breathless.
Speaker 2: My parents always meeting for the first time, savoring the
Speaker 2: sound of a name, marveling at the bones of the
Speaker 2: face cut by the bones of the hand. I trail
Speaker 2: behind him the tip of their dragon's tail. I am
Speaker 2: drawn along like a silken banner on the body of
Speaker 2: a kite.
Speaker 3: Very beautiful, it's good.
Speaker 1: It's really beautiful. Poetic verse.
Speaker 3: I'm attaching that somewhere.
Speaker 1: It's a long quote, but yeah, I just want to
Speaker 1: briefly touch on this. There is some stuff about religion
Speaker 1: in here that I thought was interesting. Here's a quote.
Speaker 1: My friends told me that if he gave the church
Speaker 1: people the chance, they would open their little books and,
Speaker 1: pointing to the pictures of fresh fruit, say things like,
Speaker 1: this is heaven. Here's the Kingdom of God, where no
Speaker 1: one suffers. Their fingers tracing an invisible line connecting all
Speaker 1: the healthy people walking through the sunlit fields. My friends
Speaker 1: and I took the pamphlets the church people handed out
Speaker 1: and studied the drawings of people having picnics on the
Speaker 1: banks of the Long Blue River, or harvesting wheat, or
Speaker 1: standing arm in arm looking into each other's eyes. To us,
Speaker 1: these pictures were more unbelievable than the warriors we saw
Speaker 1: flying in the Kung Fu movies. As far as we
Speaker 1: could understand it, the church on our street was like
Speaker 1: a ladder to the kingdom. I thought that was an
Speaker 1: interesting through line, right there is her and her mom
Speaker 1: liked to go see Kung Fu movies, so there is
Speaker 1: that through line throughout. But also, yes, there is there
Speaker 1: are some there's.
Speaker 3: A church on the street and Jehovah's Witness church there.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's some people church people about and her and
Speaker 1: most of her friends seemed mostly confused by it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting conversation about the colonization that was happening
Speaker 2: with the Catholicism of Johoah's Witness and different religions that
Speaker 2: came through in Vietnam, especially during this era. And I
Speaker 2: think it has a bigger conversation because she's more intrigued
Speaker 2: by the tails of it. Yes, I think we all
Speaker 2: are as children, but she is more intrigued by that
Speaker 2: than the actual belief system.
Speaker 1: Right the story of it, which, yeah, leads us to
Speaker 1: the next point.
Speaker 3: Dreams.
Speaker 1: Dreams are a big part in this. Here's a quote.
Speaker 1: I began to play with the ceiling, a game that
Speaker 1: I used to play with the sky when I was
Speaker 1: lying in the fishing boat on the sea. At that time,
Speaker 1: I thought that everyone and everything I missed was hovering
Speaker 1: behind the sky. The game involved looking for a seam
Speaker 1: to the sky, a thread I could pull. I told
Speaker 1: myself that if I could find the thread and focus
Speaker 1: on it hard enough with my eyes, I could tear
Speaker 1: the sky open, and my mother, my brother, my grandfather,
Speaker 1: my flippops, my favorite shells would all fall down to me.
Speaker 1: And she's a very imaginative. She's a very imaginative narrator.
Speaker 1: I remember when we were reading, we always like give
Speaker 1: each other a couple of books to choose from, And
Speaker 1: when I was reading the summary of this book, it's
Speaker 1: said in there like she feels things and sees things
Speaker 1: very strongly.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's common for only like lonely children,
Speaker 2: especially when they're forced to be isolated. So language barrier
Speaker 2: and she talked about being the only Vietnamese child not
Speaker 2: being able to speak to anyone, and everybody else were adults,
Speaker 2: so she had to dream.
Speaker 3: She dreamed as.
Speaker 2: Well as like, yes, trauma, so when you have that
Speaker 2: kind of like overlaying each other. And I find it
Speaker 2: interesting that they use the ideas of photos with them
Speaker 2: through here talking about this is photo number one, this
Speaker 2: is what too, this is photo death, because I've talked
Speaker 2: about repeatedly like being a child with no true memories,
Speaker 2: like meaning like a lot of the times that what
Speaker 2: we grow up to remember are things that are fed
Speaker 2: to us and shown to us through photographs. So if
Speaker 2: you only have a photograph with no contexts, the things
Speaker 2: that you imagine, which is kind of what she does.
Speaker 3: M hmm. I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also I thought like, because this was you know,
Speaker 1: the escaping war, Vietnam war, coming to America for quote
Speaker 1: hopefully a better life, you know, and so like that
Speaker 1: dream of that as well of like maybe it will
Speaker 1: be better here. And then yes, when they arrived, it
Speaker 1: was isolating and scary, and but that did make me
Speaker 1: think of think of that too, of sort of that
Speaker 1: dream of something across the water is maybe better, right right.
Speaker 2: Taking you somewhere else. Here's another quote. I lay in
Speaker 2: bed and remembered the things I had seen in the
Speaker 2: swimming pool. I remember the body of a boy gliding
Speaker 2: along the floor of the pool, sunlight streaming across his
Speaker 2: bare back. I remembered the reflections of clouds, family of clouds,
Speaker 2: and birds migrating. I remember the leaves that floated to
Speaker 2: the edges of the swimming pool and nested there. I
Speaker 2: remembered how the layer of the sun made the water
Speaker 2: glint like a window pane. I remember the reflections of
Speaker 2: a ball bouncing in the courtyard, and the clotheslines strung
Speaker 2: from reil to rel, the sheets fluttering like banners in
Speaker 2: the wind. But what I remembered most were the boys flying.
Speaker 2: I remember their bodies arking through the air and plunging down.
Speaker 2: I remembered how their hands parted the water, and how
Speaker 2: as they disappeared, the last thing I would see were
Speaker 2: the pale soles of their feet, falling asleep. I remember
Speaker 2: the brightness of the full moon shimmering into the swimming pool,
Speaker 2: so close, so close, like a caught fish.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, going back to the pool, as we said,
Speaker 1: it was a big piece of this story. She would
Speaker 1: see these boys jumping into the pool, and she would
Speaker 1: kind of observe how they jumped into the pool and
Speaker 1: would think about wanting to do it herself. But I
Speaker 1: just love this section because it does showcase outgrade of
Speaker 1: a writer she is, but also the narrator really taking
Speaker 1: this in and the way that those memories sometimes you
Speaker 1: don't know why they form, but they do. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking about this of the day. I have some
Speaker 1: memories that I'm like, I don't know why my brain
Speaker 1: decided that was important. I remember it so clearly right,
Speaker 1: And I feel like this is a good example of her.
Speaker 1: I mean I feel like that in here it was
Speaker 1: her thinking I want to go jump in that water.
Speaker 1: I want to go jump in the pool, and that
Speaker 1: there's just something so close that I haven't captured yet,
Speaker 1: or that's just like right out of my reach. But
Speaker 1: it's just very vivid imagery, and I think it is
Speaker 1: a good, a really good example of memories and how
Speaker 1: they can form like that.
Speaker 2: I think it's also like the person of the kids
Speaker 2: doing that to the fact that the mother wouldn't let
Speaker 2: her because of our own memories of water and how
Speaker 2: she feels the water is cursed and then the closing
Speaker 2: of the bowl because the landlord has seen this and
Speaker 2: it was the beginning and was like, oh, okay, we're
Speaker 2: gonna fill this up because you don't get yourself killed,
Speaker 2: like essentially doing some of the things. Like all of
Speaker 2: that has that same theme of kind of like the
Speaker 2: circling about of like the joy and freedom, but then
Speaker 2: the loss and then the forbidding, like it just all
Speaker 2: happened with that theme again about water.
Speaker 1: Yes, because the the mother was yeah, she was like
Speaker 1: I want to be near water, but she didn't want
Speaker 1: to go in, right, she didn't want her daughter to
Speaker 1: go in. And then when they filled up the pool
Speaker 1: because these boys were jumping off recklessly, she was very
Speaker 1: hurt by it and very like, oh, well, now we
Speaker 1: don't have water near us. And yes, as we said,
Speaker 1: water is a big theme throughout. As you said, the
Speaker 1: Vietnamese word for water very close to the Korean word.
Speaker 2: It is now so sweet. I can't say it like nop.
Speaker 2: I think nope, no, okay, no, that's what it is,
Speaker 2: so nope and I'm sorry to all the Vietnamese people,
Speaker 2: which is like kind of that same level more like that,
Speaker 2: it's very close, but that is yeah, us, I just
Speaker 2: looked it up.
Speaker 1: Yes, And according to what I looked up, it is
Speaker 1: in Vietnamese the word for water and the word for
Speaker 1: a nation, a country, and homeland are one and the
Speaker 1: same because Vietnam is surrounded by water. So and it
Speaker 1: was very prevalent, as we've we've mentioned several times the pool,
Speaker 1: but as the story progresses, you don't really know the
Speaker 1: brother has died fully until more towards the end.
Speaker 2: Right, you don't realize there was a brother, yes, until
Speaker 2: the end exactly.
Speaker 1: And it was as they were getting onto the boats.
Speaker 1: He was jumping between boats and drowned, and they brought
Speaker 1: the body back and the family was saying, like the
Speaker 1: water was heavy, this is bad water, and so that
Speaker 1: like having him in there, it was like, this is
Speaker 1: bad water. And so throughout having those things like with
Speaker 1: the pool, like wanting it there but not wanting to
Speaker 1: go in it, as you were saying, kind of that
Speaker 1: cycle of here's all of the good things with it,
Speaker 1: but here's all the bad things with it, and the
Speaker 1: trauma with it, and then having like the narrator want
Speaker 1: to jump in the water because doesn't quite has repressed
Speaker 1: this memory pretty fully for most of the story. I
Speaker 1: really liked it. It was beautiful, very beautiful. It is
Speaker 1: something definitely I would like to read again because it's
Speaker 1: very poetic and now that I think, now that I
Speaker 1: know how it moves, I think I would be much
Speaker 1: better at keeping track of like okay, I know where
Speaker 1: things are like people are right. But I do highly
Speaker 1: recommend it. It's fairly short and very beautifully written.
Speaker 3: It is yes, go eat it.
Speaker 1: Yes well. Listeners. If you have read it and you
Speaker 1: have any thoughts, please let us know if you have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for the segment. Also, please let us know.
Speaker 1: You can emails a Stephania mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
Speaker 1: We've met us on Twitter at mom Stuff podcast or
Speaker 1: on Instagram and TikTok at stuff when I've told you.
Speaker 1: We're also on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
Speaker 1: and we have a book you can get wherever you
Speaker 1: get your books. Thanks is always too, our super producer
Speaker 1: Christina or executive producer My and our contributor Joey, Thank
Speaker 1: you and thank see you for listening Stuff I'll Never
Speaker 1: told you. These production of I Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can check out the
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.
Speaker 4: No.