The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The first line of the chapter opens with a metaphor to water and the sea, when the unnamed protagonist (whom we will refer to as “the Girl” in this guide) describes the yellow houses of Linda Vista as where she and her family “eventually washed to shore” (3) in California after fleeing Vietnam. But it wasn’t her family’s first home in America. Before Linda Vista, they had lived in the Green Apartment and, before that, the Red Apartment. The narrator says that she and her family were separated before the Red Apartment, with her mother left behind on a Vietnamese beach and the Girl and her father (whom she refers to as “Ba” in Vietnamese) escaping on a fishing boat with four men. She calls these unknown men “uncles” in familial terms to convey respect for her elders. The uncles, Ba, and the Girl wind up on a U.S. naval ship and then in a refugee camp in Singapore. They experience a disorienting plane journey and taxi ride to their new home in America. 

Here, the narrator provides backstory on