In reading “The Gangster We Are All Looking For,” I felt like I was reading the narrative a personal story. In comparison to some of the other readings, this book seemed more novel-like. At the same time, it felt like a bit of a historical narrative, since many of the events that the characters in the book went through had a large historical context with the war in Vietnam at the time as well as the experiences of refugees. Still, it continued to make us go into the language of the text and analyze it with its various types of figurative language.
One passage that I found interesting that played into the ever-present theme of water was on page 63, when the narrator asked Ma, “Where does water go when it goes away?” The part that stood out to me was when the narrator later asked, “What if someone goes down into water and doesn’t come up?” and Ma answers, “Don’t know.” To me, it seemed like a reference back to the narrator’s brother, who had drowned. Even though his body was retrieved, technically, he went down into the water and never came back up. Perhaps Ma was trying to avoid the topic because it brought back memories of the event since she simply said “Don’t know” and told the narrator “Hand me that spool of thread.”
Identity and the Body in Asian American Literature 
June 9, 2013 at 6:14 pm
What makes you characterize this reading as more like a novel as opposed to other readings?