Listen, Slowly

Language is not only a way to communicate basic needs and facilitate transactions between humans; it is also deeply tied to culture and identity. We see this motif in the way Mai’s use of language changes throughout the story. When Mai begins to speak as the first-person narrator, she speaks like a typical Californian teenager. However, she makes a point to alert the reader that her mother is insistent she should expand her vocabulary by studying SAT vocabulary words each day, a practice which has Mai rolling her eyes:

Wait, is expunge an SAT word? Probably. Rewind. How about zapped? Zapped, good-bye. It’ll kill Mom when I come back espousing the vocabulary of a middle-schooler, which I am. Wait, is espouse SAT? I’m going to have to be vigilant. Vigilant? OMG, Mom has completely warped me (62).

Mai is content with her vocabulary and mostly speaking English, and though her parents want her to be bicultural, Mai has no intentions of becoming bilingual. The one person with whom Mai wishes she could speak in Vietnamese is her beloved grandmother, and when the pair travel to Vietnam together, Mai comes to understand the value of learning a second language, especially when it is the language of one’s ancestral roots. Navigating and learning the language becomes symbolic of Mai’s journey towards self-acceptance and the expansion of her consciousness beyond her American worldview.

Mai’s avoidance of speaking Vietnamese stems from a plight many in the diaspora endure as they resettle and assimilate into a new culture with a foreign language. Mai’s American classmates made fun of the way she spoke, so naturally, she avoided sounding a certain way to escape being bullied: “On the first day a boy laughed at me when I said, ‘I see car red.’ Well, that was a direct translation. I stopped speaking Vietnamese” (11). Mai’s experience mirrors that of many first-generation immigrants whose parents try to retain their ancestral language by not speaking English at home or forcing their children to attend language classes on the weekends. Mai’s parents have been lenient in her learning Vietnamese, but Mai keeps a secret: She understands conversational Vietnamese, a skill that serves her well on her trip.

In Vietnam, Mai is free to explore the language without fear of embarrassment, but she struggles to grasp the language’s nuances such as the upward and downward inflections signified by the diacritical marks. Mai’s translator, Anh Minh, also becomes her language tutor as he not only helps Mai communicate but teaches her about the phonemic subtleties and linguistic distinctions that make Vietnamese an elegant and fascinating language. As he teaches her, he says, “you will know how to say every word perfectly because the beauty of Vietnamese stems from every word bein’ spelled exactly the way it sounds” (74). The author employs several layers of interpretation to establish the significance of language: Anh Minh interprets for Mai, Mai occasionally deciphers what she hears when she is eavesdropping, and the author interprets for the reader when the passages spoken in Vietnamese are italicized. After spending time immersed in the language, Mai’s frustrations ease, but it is her relationship with Út that births her desire to become bilingual.

At first, the girls manage to communicate through writing, but once Út realizes Mai can understand her speech, a whole new world of communication opens between the friends. Mai comes to appreciate the necessity for language in developing relationships, something she first learned from her grandmother. By the end of her trip, Mai has made a complete shift in her feelings about becoming bilingual, and she commits to taking language classes when she returns to California. Through her relationship with Bà and her time spent absorbing Vietnamese culture and language, Mai decides to adopt it as her second language, symbolizing a crucial step in her accepting herself as both Vietnamese and American.