The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The Girl describes her perception of Vietnam through the lens of her grandparents: “Vietnam is a black-and-white photograph of my grandparents sitting in bamboo chairs in their front courtyard” (78). Her grandparents—who come from the south of Vietnam and are Catholic—disown Ma for marrying Ba. Ba is a “Buddhist gangster from the North” (79) and that factor likely plays a role in the grandparents’ disapproval. Before meeting Ba, Ma had been courted by suitors who ran errands for her parents, but she says that she didn’t understand what love was at the time. She says that “love came to her in a dark movie theater” (79) where she sees Ba for the first time. She’s memorizes the features of his handsome face, which she recalls after being separated from her family. Ma dreams about the end of the war, smokes cigarettes with Ba, and is recklessly in love. These actions contrast with the image of the responsible daughter that she projects to her parents. She becomes sullen around her family and spends her nights thinking of Ba’s hands and what Vietnam had been like prior to the war with America, which dropped chemicals onto the trees that left them empty of leaves.