The Boat People
The novel opens with a prologue in which the narrator describes his escape from Vietnam following the fall of Saigon. He is just one of the multitudes of refugees that came to be known as the “boat people.” He introduces everyone on the boat collectively as the unwanted, unneeded, and unseen. A little later, he expands upon and references back to that opening line. “We, the unwanted, wanted so much. We wanted food, water, and parasols, although umbrellas would be fine. We wanted clean clothes, baths, and toilets, even of the squatting kind, since squatting on land was safer and less embarrassing than clinging to the bulwark of a rolling boat with one’s posterior hanging over the edge.” It is a portrait of misery, of a nightmare where even the most basic things taken for granted become unimaginable luxuries. The list of wants is especially effective at instilling the broader meaning of the title by illustrating an extreme case of commitment to a goal.
Consciousness Raising
This novel is partly a dissertation on communist ideology. Especially useful in these sections of the narrative is the repetition of significant terms marking the development of communist critical theory. “Adorno! You hadn’t heard his name since you read his and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment…I will never forget how we students all over the world almost changed the world, until we encountered what Althusser called the `Repressive State Apparatus’…Mao said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun…You lived through what Gramsci called a war of maneuver. I am in what Gramsci called a war of position…the capitalist seduction that Marx warned about: loving a commodity, a thing, as if it were an actual living being, an affair that could only be short-lived at best.” A listing of these names alone would read like a bibliography of required reading in a graduate class, and it is just a sampling. The referential and allusive type of imagery that is constructed from these famous names, texts, and jargon of critical theory is enough to produce “the canned version of philosophy” that the narrator identifies as the preference of Americans.
America
The narrator is Vietnamese, and the story is set in France. And yet, the specter of America continually hovers over the text. Much of that hovering takes the form of imagery: “As for America, just think of Coca-Cola. That elixir is really something, embodying as it does the addictive, teeth-decaying sweetness of a capitalism that was no good for you no matter how it fizzled on the tongue.” This is a typical example of the way all things American are disparaged by the narrator. More often than not, the name is used metonymically to discuss an entire population. At least as often, it is accompanied by mention of iconic symbols foreigners often associate with American culture. In addition to Coke, this imagery includes apple pie, Tommy guns, Ray-Ban sunglasses, and cowboy hats.
Colonization and Racism
The history of colonization is inextricably linked with racism. Text that indicts colonialism and racism together are plentiful, but one particular image stands out in stark relief: “Whitewashing the blood-soaked profits of colonization was the only kind of laundering white men did with their own hands.” In this remarkably economical use of imagery, just 20 words are required to convey the profound racism, brutal imperialism, manipulation of history, and economic subjugation associated with the long-term consequences of colonialism.
