The Gangster We Are All Looking For Analysis

In Thuy’s book “The Gangster We Are All Looking For,” the narrator’s older brother drowned in Vietnam. Later, the narrator and her father immigrated to California when she was still a young girl, leaving her mother behind in Vietnam. Her mother eventually joined her and her father in the U.S. As the narrator grew older, she watched her parents as they faced difficulties adapting to their new lives in America and remained haunted by memories of her dead brother. The narrator’s father was especially troubled by his past, and he turned to alcoholism. This caused him to experience drunken rages in which he started to physically abuse his daughter. When she was a teenager, the narrator finally had enough of her father’s grief and anger, and she ran away from home.
Twenty years after her brother’s death, the narrator lives on the East Coast while her parents continue living in California. She is currently an adult and a writer, and she happens to reminisce about an event that occurred the year her mother arrived in the U.S. Her family was reunited and spending its “first spring together in California” (Thuy, 157). One night that spring, the narrator’s father took her and her mother to a beach where they all enjoyed the sight of the ocean
The narrator and her parents are bonded by their shared experiences involving water, including the one featured in the last scene of Thuy’s book. In Vietnam, they all lived in a coastal village and one of their family members, the narrator’s brother, died when he drowned in the sea. Moreover, the narrator and her parents had to traverse an entire ocean in order to emigrate from Vietnam to America. These shared experiences became unforgettable memories, which keep the family members in each other’s hearts and minds even though they are separated by time and