The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The Gangster We Are All Looking For
Cover of the Knopf 2004 paperback edition
Author lê thi diem thúy
Country United States
Language English
Publisher Knopf
Publication date
 2003
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 162
ISBN 0-375-70002-1

The Gangster We Are All Looking For is the first novel by Vietnamese-American author lê thi diem thúy, published in 2003. It was first published as a short piece in The Best American Essays of 1997 and was also awarded a Pushcart Prize “Special Mention.”[1]

The novel is a fragmented sequence of events recollected by a nameless narrator. In a first-person narrative, the narrator tells the stories of her past experiences as a Vietnamese immigrant. The time and place continuously shift throughout the novel; the story takes place both in Vietnam and America. The novel is concerned with themes of identity, family dynamics, war, and liberation. Images of water are prominent symbolically and literally throughout the novel.[2][3]

Narrative style

The novel is told through the voice of the immigrant girl when she is six, and continues building until she was 26.

The flow of the prose is anachronistic, often jumping from life in America to life in Vietnam, at times even to a time in Vietnam before the narrator's birth. The tenses also switch from present tense to past and back. The novel is also told episodically fractured, because as the author stated, "memory, by its nature, is very fragmented".[4]

Themes

Water

Throughout the novel, water is the most prominent motif. From the beginning, lê thi diem thúy inserts that “In Vietnamese, the word for water and the word for a nation, a country, and a homeland are one and the same: nu’ó’c.” In a similar sense, water plays a symbolic role in diverse ways in the text—-often, with dual/opposite meanings. Most of the themes within the text are somehow related to and entwined with the flow of water.

The Mobility of Memory through the Photograph[5]

Through the photograph, The Gangster We Are All Looking For explores the nature of memory and its ability, or inability, to travel from generation to generation. In le’s narrative, the photograph can be understood not only in terms of reference and time, but also “perspective of mobility”.

“Arrival 1: Listening to the Mortified Eloquence of the Photograph”

From the beginning, the photograph is not presented as an object to be viewed, but as a force which disturbs the narrator’s somewhat settled family. Although the photograph is not accompanied with text or a written message, to the mother, the picture is a demand, a message which tells of a time when the mother had been disowned. Because the photograph is loaded with deep emotion and grief for the mother, “she loses herself, literally her self, to it entirely” (8). But for the daughter, who does not associate much experience with the photograph, the picture does not offer any sort of access.

“Arrival 2: (At)Tending to the Split Photograph”

Treating the photograph as if it was an actual immigrant, Ma tells the narrator that the photograph has come to move in. The narrator’s response is: “I don’t really know what she is talking about but I say ‘O.K.’ anyway,” suggesting the alienation and challenge of intergenerational remembering. Because the photograph is addressed towards the mother, the mother recognizes herself as the child, the grandparents as the parents. Since the mother is taking on the role of the child, she dislodges the identity of the narrator. Because the mother perceives the photograph as addressed towards herself, the photograph offers no connection to the narrator. Actually, it dislocates the narrator from her identity.

“The mother becomes a ‘child,’ the father a ‘gangster,’ and the daughter confronts the multiple voids of a vacated identity" (10). Because the daughter is incapable of interpreting or connecting to the photograph, since it was taken before she was born, her only option is to engage in a close examination which results in empty meaning. Lorensen states that the “daughter’s … relation to the family portrait from Vietnam [is] the mad dance before the entire neighborhood.” “The daughter’s mad dance could be viewed as a theatrical examination of a photograph that refuses to have meaning for her” (11). Lorensen claims that although the daughter can not see the photograph the way her mother does, she still recognizes its ability to disintegrate her family, the way her own body “dissolves” (12) as she dances in front of the entire neighborhood.

“Arrival 3: The Second Death of the Photographic Subject as the Catalytic Mark of Signification”

Lorensen also suggests that the since the photograph has come to represent the grandparents, when the family is evicted from their Linda Vista home, leaving behind the photograph, two types of “evictions” take place, the eviction from Linda Vista in America, and another one from the past, when the mother is evicted, or disowned, from her family in Vietnam. Although this may seem like an extravagant interpretation, the details of the narration suggest otherwise. There are two descriptions which link both evictions together. The description of the chain-link fence and the calling of each other's names, which are present in both "evictions". At the end, the mother calls out for her parents, which she’s forgotten. This has a double meaning. She’s calling for her home in Vietnam, to return to Vietnam, as well as the photographs she’s forgotten at her Linda Vista home.

The Textual Representation of a Visual Representation (Ekphrasticism)

Through le’s language, to the narrator and to the American reader, the photograph’s meaning slides from being the grandparents to being “Vietnam.” This is due to le’s language in introducing the photograph as “Vietnam is a black-and-white photograph of […]” (78) which invokes other images of black-and-white photographs regarding Vietnam that the collective American memory may recall such as the photograph of a girl running from a napalm strike or the close range shooting of a Viet Cong suspect.[6]

Reception

Le's novel received wide acclaim through a multitude of book reviews ranging from Entertainment Weekly to The New York Times to Publishers Weekly. There have been some minor reserves, though, about the pace of the book and the difficulty of reading a fragmented narrative.

Entertainment Weekly: "Lovely and sparse, Gangster is like an impressionist painting-pretty strokes of prose melding to create a larger whole."[7]

Library Journal: "The story opens slowly but gathers strength, and though it remains somewhat muted, le's lyrical writing and skill with the telling vignette will reward patient readers."[8]

The New York Times: "Readers will not always find 'The Gangster We Are All Looking For' easy to follow or the narrator's viewpoint consistent, but the cumulative, almost liturgical effects of the novel is both heartbreaking and exhilarating."[9]

Publishers Weekly: "This is a stark and significant work that will challenge readers."[10]

References

  1. ↑ Huand, Guiyou. Asian American Poets: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. 201-203. Book.
  2. ↑ Baumann, Paul. "Washing Time Away." The New York Times. 25 May 2003. Print.
  3. ↑ Nguyen, Chau. "In Search of the Gangster." UCLA Institute: Asia Pacific Arts. 9 April 2004. Web. <http://www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=9955>
  4. ↑ thúy, lê thi diem. "Fragments of Memory." Far East Economic Review. 11 March 2004. Vol. 167, Iss. 10, pg. 52. Print.
  5. ↑ Gsoels-Lorensen, Gutta. “lê thi diem thúy’s ‘The Gangster We Are All Looking For’: The Ekphrastic Emigration of a Photograph.” Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Volume 48, Number 4 / Summer 2007. Print.
  6. ↑ Gsoels-Lorensen, Gutta. “lê thi diem thúy’s ‘The Gangster We Are All Looking For’: The Ekphrastic Emigration of a Photograph”Studies in Contemporary Fiction. Volume 48, Number 4 / Summer 2007. Print
  7. ↑ Lee, Allyssa. "The Gangster We Are All Looking For." Entertainment Weekly. 9 May 2003. Issue 709, pg. 83. Print.
  8. ↑ Seaman, Donna. "The Gangster We Are All Looking For." Library Journal. 1 March 2003. Vol. 128, Issue 4; pg. 119. Print.
  9. ↑ Baumann, Paul. "Washing Time Away." The New York Times. 25 May 2003. Print.
  10. ↑ Zaleski, Jeff. "The Gangster We Are All Looking For." Publishers Weekly. 21 April 2003. Vol. 250, Iss. 16; pg. 39. Print.
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