6/1 Le

In Nam Le’s fictional story, the narrator reflects on his childhood as he works to provide his last story as a student. At the same time, he accompanies his father because he rarely visits. The story seems as if it was going to be another descriptive, fictional narrative. There was an emphasis on the description of the father’s hands—“hard ad leatherly, moved deftly in the sink.” Thus, that was when I realized the story was going to have more meaning than simply being just a story. The story extended to ultimately show that sometimes Asian narratives become so normalized, Asians do not realize how their history has affected them in the present or their future.

In this case, the narrator tries to explicitly subdue writing about Vietnam. It could have been about outside influences such as his colleagues stating “I’m sick of ethnic lit” or it could have been simply about the fact that he wanted to hide from his past. Therefore, I found the part where his girlfriend mentioned, “You’re romanticizing his past…to make sense of the things you said he did to you” very powerful. Her statement demonstrates how Asian-Americans are known to ignore their past and cover it because of moral teachings such as “Buddhist tenets of suffering and acceptance…” As a result, in relation to the class, Asian-American narratives become another outlet that shows that Asian-American culture or culture in general can be complicated as there are hidden implications to culture.