Things We Lost to the Water

This section focuses on father figures, highlighting the Fatherhood/Parental Influence theme, as is most clearly evident in the discussions surrounding Vinh and Công, though other characters play similar, if minor, roles. Vinh, Hương’s boyfriend, moves in after losing his job and never leaves. Tuấn and Bình resent his entrance into their lives and their space, and they reject all his attempts to build relationships with them. Although Vinh has no biological children, he considers Tuấn and Bình his sons, making them food, sharing his life experiences, and warning them away from bad choices like the Southern Boyz. However, his attempts to reach them are always blocked because of Công.

Although Công is never physically there in the boys’ lives in New Orleans, he’s nonetheless a constant presence. Hương, despite wanting her sons to forget him and move on, can’t do so herself even after she meets Vinh. Instead, she keeps Công’s memory alive for her sons by using him as a disciplinary measure—saying he’d approve or disapprove of a certain behavior whenever her sons get into trouble. Công’s spectral presence prevents the boys from accepting Vinh as their father because they’re taught that Công, however impossibly, already fills that role (figuratively, if not literally). This pressure (and Vinh’s presence) pushes Tuấn out of the house and toward the gang, while Bình has a more complex relationship with his nonexistent father, constantly seeking a more realistic role model.

Bình first tries with Father Hiệu, a Vietnamese Catholic priest and the first Asian man he can associate with paternal activities like volleyball games. This ultimately fails because of his connections to religion and Hương’s negative reaction to it. After Vinh moves in, Bình harbors brief fantasies that Vinh is his biological father but dismisses them when there is no supporting evidence. Although he’s initially curious about fathers as a concept and about finding one for himself, his family’s constant references to Công in comparison to Bình become suffocating—the man becomes a stranger larger than life, while Bình increasingly finds reasons to become a disappointment. Thus, his discovery of the Công-related mementos deals the harshest blow to Bình—Công is suddenly both humanized and flawed; Bình, as his perceived clone, now has a much lower standard to surpass, but he no longer has any desire to do so. In this way, Bình’s complicated relationship to father figures also highlights his own struggle, highlighting the Family Versus Self theme, as he resists the pressure to become a replica of a man he never knew.

Bình’s struggle with family relates heavily to the Immigrant Experience Versus Identity theme. He has a more tenuous connection to Vietnam than his mother or older brother do, so he tries to find community in other ways, such as the Vietnamese Catholic church, which Hương rejects. Despite his American enculturation, Bình is still “othered” by his heritage, so he initially embraces his marginalization as a general identity rather than focusing on specifics. His immigrant background helps him bond with Addy, another immigrant child, while being gay draws him to Howie. His bookishness distances him from his immediate family, though it ironically connects him to Công, a literature professor—a fact that his family rarely focuses on. Rather than consider his isolation a burden he must shoulder, Bình makes it part of his identity, thereby rejecting his perceived impossible familial duty in favor of his own desires.

Hương and Tuấn’s concerns remain centered on the Making/Finding a Home and Family Versus Self themes. Hương continues creating her home in New Orleans through building a relationship with Vinh. The longan orchard expedition reminds her of Vietnam, but as she settles into her life in the US, she realizes that New Orleans has become her home now. She notices the switch from newcomer to local when she shows Vinh around the city on their dates and when she scolds tourists from the perspective of a local. Although her perspective has changed, prioritizing her family hasn’t, except in her expression of it and the effects of her choices: Determined to protect Bình from dangerous ideologies, she forbids him from joining a church, cutting him off from Vietnamese communities. She disapproves of Thảo, so Tuấn moves out. Lying about Công results in Bình’s perception of betrayal. Hương’s single choice for herself—dating Vinh—is in turn subsumed by her obsession with Công; by not letting him go, she denies Vinh space to fill the role her sons need. Thus, though she has good intentions in creating a home for her family, her desire to protect them eventually pushes them away.

Although Tuấn has accepted his life in New Orleans, Vietnam continues to hold sway. His quest for home and family is a more figurative one—a place and a community in which to be Vietnamese outside Vietnam. Despite the Southern Boyz’ unsavory reputation, he believes he finds this community with this gang of adolescents and young adults, who share his immigrant experiences of racism and prejudice yet continue to be unapologetically Vietnamese regardless and extend that support to each other. Tuấn admits that his attraction to Thảo stems from her Việt pride—her refusal to anglicize her name and her Vietnamese fluency—as well as her rebellious nature. Despite Vinh’s warnings, Tuấn thinks he has found the family he wants, even if it’s not the family he needs, to the point that he moves out of Hương’s home to create his own with Thảo. Only when he has been alone and independent for a while can he self-reflect and realize that his true family, the one he’ll put before himself, is his biological family.

Symbols feature heavily in this section. Water as memory surfaces at two major turning points for Bình: his awakening as gay and his discovery of Công. Unable to swim, Bình is wary of water; though he accompanies Addy to the pool, he initially refuses to swim. This could be a subconscious pseudo-memory from when Hương and Tuấn fled Vietnam and a rejection of the collective cultural memory that his family shares. At the same time, he makes memories with Howie in the pool when Howie teaches him to swim and when they kiss. Although this encounter is relatively brief compared to his other relationships, both Howie and Bình’s realization of his gay identity impact the direction of his life.

So, too, does his discovery of his mother’s memory box about Công. These mementos symbolize her inability to let him go—and Công’s spectral presence in their lives. After realizing the truth, Bình is all too happy to consign them to memory—by throwing them into the bayou during his confrontation with his mother. This triggers a flashback for her but forces her to come to terms with the truth: Công is alive in memory but gone—and she must learn to let go.

Bình’s own use of writing ties into the symbolism of language as identity. The stories he writes, such as the man who lost his memory and his male/male romances, depict either things he can’t let go of (memory loss being loss of community and forging his own path) or individual desires (embracing his gay identity). In addition, his stories—written in English—illustrate a key difference between him and his family: the use of language as an expression of identity. Bình, less connected to his Vietnamese heritage and more enculturated into US life, mainly uses English and even anglicizes his name. Hương and Vinh, conversely, have the strongest connection to Vietnam and incorporate the most Vietnamese into their dialogues and monologues. Hương’s messages to Công are likewise written/recorded in Vietnamese; while Bình doesn’t understand it, he can guess. Tuấn and Addy, children of immigrants with stronger connections to their heritage, use Vietnamese occasionally, and Tuấn actively seeks it out when he feels it disappearing and struggles to maintain active connections to integral parts of his identity.

Additionally, this section introduces the symbol of the phone as connection (or reconnection). Familial relationships strain and grow in these chapters, often in dramatic ways, as Tuấn and Bình come of age. The narrative depicts the status of these relationships through phone call attempts and whether or not they’re answered. Hương, feeling her relationship with Bình dissolving, calls him during her dinner date with Vinh. Bình doesn’t answer, as he just discovered the shoebox of Công’s mementos. This foreshadows the future confrontation in which he rejects not only Công as a father but also Hương as a mother and cuts off his relationship with her. Conversely, after Tuấn breaks up with Thảo, he wants to reconnect with his family, so he calls Hương, inadvertently calling during Bình and Hương’s confrontation. The lack of response represents his own distance from his family and the effort necessary to rebuild his relationships with them, though his decision to call reflects his desire to do so.