Summary of the Gangster We All Search for
These Hateful Hands
In this beautifully described unfortunate tale, it paints a detailed picture of what life was like first hand during the Vietnam war and its effects it had on the main characters and how coming to America was just as hard as living through the Vietnam war. It is a tale built on love but sustained on hate. The Authors mother was disowned for falling deeply in love with a rough gangster from the northern region of Vietnam. They had a very rough life in Vietnam filled with fear, recklessness, abandonment,and lust. Death was a constanant the emense amount of violence that followed suit. “She had heard a story about a girl in a neighboring town who was killed during a napalm bombing…they found her floating on the sea. The phosphorus from the napalm made her body glow like a lantern”(Luy, pg 307). Plenty of people they either heard about or knew personally died in very horrific ways and the fear of it ocuring to them was always emminant. The Authors father moved his mother away from her disowning family in hopes of a better life in America. This idea was great in theory but became a nightare once it was reality. Once in America the family was plagued by segregation, racism, and terrible living conditions. The Author was often made fun of for his ethnicity, and for his status as a member of society. Their housing was also segregated they kept the poor Asian immegrants separated from the rest of the houses, making sure that they stayed within their own people. Their houses were made cheaper, looked beat up and were never up-kept by there owners. If the houses were remodeled the new owners would then force the families out of their current homes an raise the rent on the new homes to ensure no immegrants would return to live in the new remodeled houses. This segregation was not understood completely by the Authors mother, but yet they embraced their crappy abodes, his mother grew wonderful gardens full of color and his father created shortcuts and
In this beautifully described unfortunate tale, it paints a detailed picture of what life was like first hand during the Vietnam war and its effects it had on the main characters and how coming to America was just as hard as living through the Vietnam war. It is a tale built on love but sustained on hate. The Authors mother was disowned for falling deeply in love with a rough gangster from the northern region of Vietnam. They had a very rough life in Vietnam filled with fear, recklessness, abandonment,and lust. Death was a constanant the emense amount of violence that followed suit. “She had heard a story about a girl in a neighboring town who was killed during a napalm bombing…they found her floating on the sea. The phosphorus from the napalm made her body glow like a lantern”(Luy, pg 307). Plenty of people they either heard about or knew personally died in very horrific ways and the fear of it ocuring to them was always emminant. The Authors father moved his mother away from her disowning family in hopes of a better life in America. This idea was great in theory but became a nightare once it was reality. Once in America the family was plagued by segregation, racism, and terrible living conditions. The Author was often made fun of for his ethnicity, and for his status as a member of society. Their housing was also segregated they kept the poor Asian immegrants separated from the rest of the houses, making sure that they stayed within their own people. Their houses were made cheaper, looked beat up and were never up-kept by there owners. If the houses were remodeled the new owners would then force the families out of their current homes an raise the rent on the new homes to ensure no immegrants would return to live in the new remodeled houses. This segregation was not understood completely by the Authors mother, but yet they embraced their crappy abodes, his mother grew wonderful gardens full of color and his father created shortcuts and
Cited: American Contexts,” The Gangster We Are All Looking For”, Le Thi Diem Thuy