Things We Lost to the Water

The focal themes in this section are Family Versus Self and Fatherhood/Parental Influence, though other themes and symbols are also present. These major themes follow split trajectories, tracing Bình’s character in contrast to Hương, Tuấn, and Vinh. Bình rejects Hương after learning the truth about Công—and considers Tuấn his only close family, forcing Tuấn to mediate as the price for his familial reconnection. However, Bình eventually distances himself from Tuấn as well, warily viewing Schreiber as a potential father figure. Schreiber, also an immigrant, bears similarity to Công in both quizzing behavior and literary profession, but although he nurtures Bình’s academic interests, his status as a role model remains complicated. Schreiber, a white man from Europe with a white-collar job, has a drastically different immigrant experience than Bình did, benefiting from privileges that Bình’s family never received. Therefore, although Schreiber defends Bình from the harassment of his white students, he can never fully empathize with Bình’s struggles, and Bình is never certain whether Schreiber—initially his employer—views his intelligence and academic success as a celebration of his own talents or as an intriguing circus act. Because of this uncertainty, Bình is once again suffocated by Schreiber’s planned path for him and rejects any semblance of familial duty to Schreiber by moving to France (Bình’s personal choice) instead. There, Bình chooses to embrace Michel as the center of his new “found family” and unintentionally finds a home with him. This highlights the Making/Finding a Home theme; he is free to be his authentic gay American self, something Bình has desired his whole life. Thus, Bình’s story underscores the Immigrant Experience Versus Identity theme because he can fully understand his own immigrant identity, with a clear explanation of how he came to France from the US, rather than a nebulous, disconnected family history of Vietnam. This understanding allows him to better empathize with his mother and brother’s experiences when they first arrived in New Orleans.

Similar to how he rejected Schreiber’s support, Bình rejects his familial duty to attend Công’s funeral, considering the man a stranger and not family at all. Tuấn and Hương, conversely, feel duty-bound to attend, again relegating Vinh to the sidelines. During this time, Hương and Tuấn realize how much their lives have changed, and they solidify their perception that Vietnam is no longer home to them; they’ve both made new homes in New Orleans. This process was incremental, including gaining American citizenship, using English instead of Vietnamese, and disdaining tourists, but seeing the contrast between Công’s life and theirs—as well as the loss of Tuấn’s childhood home in Saigon—emphasizes the different directions their lives have taken. They identify with their immigrant identities more than with their former Vietnamese citizenship. Looking for his childhood home, Tuấn feels lost and alienated by his former home.

While Hương finally gets the closure she desires about Công’s abandonment, Công and Vinh can finally be the father figures they’re meant to be: Công’s determination to free his family at the cost of his relationship with them is his answer to the conflict of Family Versus Self, as well as his concept of home. For Công, “home” and “homeland” are equivalent concepts: He can’t leave Vietnam, no matter how much he’ll suffer from staying, so he makes a home for the person he has become. Meanwhile, Tuấn, helpless in Saigon, depends on Vinh to navigate and guide him. Like Bình, Công has become a stranger to Tuấn, while Vinh finally emerges as a father figure and a stabilizer, keeping Tuấn grounded in Vietnam and Hương grounded during Hurricane Katrina. While Vinh is never verbally acknowledged as “father” in the novel, after the funeral, he’s finally accepted as one.

For Hương, the symbolism of water as memory becomes important. Scattering Công’s ashes into the river consigns him to memory, allowing her to finally begin to truly let him go and imagine the symbolic reunion she has craved. Đinh-Fredric’s appearance in the rainstorm, seeking his own father, is a reminder of how present Hương kept Công in her family and the disastrous effects it had on them; at the same time, “his face reminded [Hương] of Vietnam” (207), stirring up memories of both her family and her immigrant experience. The corpse in the hurricane represents her final ability to accept the memories and difficult truths of her life and release them, in favor of embracing her new life.

Water is significant to Bình as well, through his recurring dreams. As he settles into France, he rejects his biological family; his memories gradually fade away. His dreams of the boat from Vietnam, while not true memories, bring his family back to his attention, especially with the news coverage of the hurricane sweeping away his life in New Orleans. In addition, this ties into the symbolism of writing: While Bình ostensibly went to France to write, his notebook remains blank. Because he has achieved everything he wanted to—creating a home, finding family, and being himself—he has nothing to hold onto. While not being held back by memories is freeing (contrasting with Hương), having no memories at all is equally debilitating (recall Hương and Vinh’s conversation about living with too much water or too little). Therefore, Bình struggles with ennui and feels purposeless until he sees the hurricane flooding, calling him back to his family.

The symbolism of the phone as connection/reconnection recurs in this section as well. Tuấn is the only family that Bình will call, symbolizing their relatively stable bond. However, their disconnected phone calls and communication evidence the tenuousness of their relationship: Bình does what he wants, while Tuấn focuses on holding the family together and doesn’t understand Bình’s decision to leave for France. Tuấn and Hương’s unanswered phone calls during the hurricane reflect the danger of their family being once again torn apart by a disaster, but the shelter they seek—with a man the text codes as gay and a Black family with two children, respectively—reflects their desire to come together and the challenges they must face to do so: Hương approves of Addy (a Black woman) as Tuấn’s partner but is estranged from her other son; Tuấn and Addy are aware of Bình’s gay identity but haven’t fully accepted it. Bình’s phone call to Hương at the novel’s end is answered (in Vietnamese), representing multiple forms of connection: Bình wants to reconnect with his family (finally choosing them over himself), and they must mutually accept each other’s choices to embrace or reject Vietnamese heritage in a final depiction of the symbolism inherent in language as identity.