Stealing Buddha's Dinner

“We are people without a country, someone in the camp said. Until we walk out of that gate, my father replied. And then we are American.”

Fleeing from Vietnam, Bich’s father looks at America as a beacon of hope. This quote indicates his faith in the American dream, and his naiveté regarding his family’s assimilation.

“I came of age in the 1980s, before diversity and multicultural awareness trickled into western Michigan. Before ethnic was cool. Before Thai restaurants became staples in every town.”

Here, Bich comments on the cultural period in which she came of age, before multiculturalism was the norm in non-major urban centers in the Midwest. Bich and her family are surrounded mainly by white, Christian conservatives.

“As a child I couldn’t figure out what ‘All-American’ was supposed to mean. Was it a promise, a threat, a warning?”

Her position as a Vietnamese-American whose family is hesitant to assimilate means that Bich is usually considered other. Her relationship to her identity is skewed by the fact that she isn’t seen as wholly American due to her race, which complicates her relationship with family and friends.