Things We Lost to the Water

If water symbolizes memory, memorabilia and writing—letters, stories, postcards, photos, and tapes—signify the ability (or inability) to let go of a memory, dream, or otherwise important aspect of one’s identity. Hương is the clearest example of this. Despite—and perhaps because of—her new life in New Orleans, until Công’s funeral, she never really lets go of him, both in her memory and in his reserved role in his sons’ lives. Initially uncertain why they were separated but hopeful that they’ll be reunited, Hương continually writes letters to Công and sends family tape recordings, even when she gets no reply. She’s desperate and clever in her attempts to get past Communist censors using disguised tapes rather than handwritten missives. However, even after Công cuts off all contact, Hương continues to write to him, the letters becoming a diary but his name keeping him in her memory, even as she begins to date Vinh. Her constant reference to Công as a form of attempted discipline for her sons keeps him abstractly in their memories too. While he isn’t physically present in their lives like Vinh is, they don’t consider Vinh their father because of Công, and even if they wanted to let go of him, they couldn’t because he’s the metric against which they must live their lives—in constant comparison and disappointment.

Bình tries to force his family to move on from Công when he discovers Hương’s lie about Công’s “death” and attempts to literally relegate Công to the past by dumping the letters, tapes, and photos into the bayou. However, this attempt only half works: Hương and Tuấn continue to live their adult lives, but not until Công’s funeral and their trip to Vietnam can they truly begin to let go. They send off Công’s ashes (along with their memories of Vietnam before they fled), but Tuấn still receives some of Công’s things to remember him by. Vinh is jealous and insecure about Công’s presence in his life with Hương, but he has already nearly entirely replaced Công in her mind. She confides in Vinh through conversation rather than writing after that trip, including her encounter with Đinh-Fredric.

For Đinh-Fredric, his American father is his obsession, as the photo he carries symbolizes. Having moved to New Orleans with his mother as a child to search for his father, Đinh-Fredric spends his life on this quest. Even after moving away to Texas, Đinh-Fredric returns to New Orleans as a young adult, searching for his father and asking people if they recognize his father’s photo. It’s a fruitless quest, but he can’t—or won’t—let it go.

Writing is more complicated for Bình, as it represents more than one aspect of his identity. His interest in English literature connects him with both his father the professor and his American enculturation and identity (compared to Vietnam). His desire to write—in Paris—represents his dreams for the future, one where he’s unencumbered by his heritage and ethnicity. His stories about misunderstood men and gay love signify his complicated feelings about himself in New Orleans and the father he never knew, while embracing a sexual orientation his family and the society around him would both reject, a secret close to his heart. He learned this lesson the hard way through the photo of him with the Catholic priest: For him, it’s a pleasant memory, but it reminds Hương of communism and her negative experiences with Catholicism, so she destroys it out of trauma and prejudice.

However, Bình’s struggle to write in Paris signifies the opposite of secrets: He has moved on and has nothing to hide in France—he has achieved all his dreams (or so he thinks). He lives with his lover, Michel, has escaped the pressures of his family, and has embraced and let go of all he desired and feared. He must contend now with moving back—to the heritage he never knew and the family he left behind. Bình must learn not how to let go but how to get back what he lost.

As in many novels about immigrants, language plays a key role in telling this story. Here, language symbolizes cultural identity, and the use of language reflects changes in that identity.

Hương, who immigrates to the US as an adult, is the most enculturated by Vietnam and remains the most attached to it. This is reflected by her relatively heavy use of Vietnamese in both dialogue and monologue—and by the relatively broken English she speaks as she adapts to life in New Orleans. As a new mother who knows almost no English, her panic at the loss of her English notes is palpable; here, she’s still very Vietnamese and doesn’t identify as American at all. Later, when she meets Vinh, she incorporates more New Orleans lingo into her English and begins to consider the city her home, even yelling at tourists during a date. Not until she returns to Vietnam and her makeup is banned by customs does she realize how different she has become from the person she was when she left—and how much her identity has shifted. (Curiously, Vinh uses the most obvious Vietnamese in that section; while Hương still uses it to speak with Lan, it’s mostly depicted in English.) Vinh, who likewise immigrated to the US as an adult, more quickly adapts to American culture. He adopts English terms of endearment into his speech, calling Hương “honey” and “dear,” and even adopts the American attitude of work/life balance rather than the Vietnamese/immigrant goal of a good work ethic and stable income. However, his Vietnamese identity never entirely goes away: He still speaks Vietnamese in Vietnam and navigates the cultural mores with greater ease than Hương or Tuấn.

Tuấn’s conflict between his Vietnamese and American identities is clear both in his use of language and his desire to be around it. As a child, he speaks mostly in Vietnamese, signifying his connection to—and pride in—his heritage. As he grows older and starts school, his thoughts begin to change into a mixture of Vietnamese and English, even when white kids bully him because of his heritage and teachers consider him slow because of his language. As an adolescent, he speaks more English (though broken) but seeks out Vietnamese expression. Thảo attracts him with her Việt pride, Vietnamese name, and fluency in Vietnamese, and the Southern Boyz’ exaggerated flaunting of their heritage presents a way to be Vietnamese without being ridiculed for it, though gangs have their own dark side. By the time Tuấn returns to Vietnam, he’s more American than Vietnamese. He ditches the Southern Boyz and breaks up with Thảo, severing (he thinks) his strongest connection to Vietnam. Upon returning to Vietnam, the change is stark: He has lost his language and lost himself. His childhood home and former landmarks are gone, and everything is unfamiliar. Whether he wanted to or not, Tuấn became American, and his family is the only tie to Vietnam he has left.

Bình, meanwhile, is on the other end of the spectrum. Even though he’s Vietnamese, he’s enculturated in the US to the point that he’s more American than Vietnamese. He can’t understand or speak Vietnamese, and the tapes, when he finds them, are unintelligible to him, reflecting in a long paragraph of Vietnamese that was in English (for the reader’s understanding) when Hương recorded the message at the beginning of the novel. Even Bình’s family considers him more American than they are. Bình, unlike his family, alters his name to Ben to fit English phonetics, further distancing himself from his Vietnamese heritage.

However, he’s rejected as American, too, because of his looks and heritage. In this way, he’s perhaps more “othered” than his family because without one identity, they still have another to fall back on; Bình doesn’t. Instead, he moves to France, where his “otherness” will make more sense: He can clearly explain his foreignness there when he couldn’t in New Orleans, and leaving one’s country behind often solidifies one’s relationship with it rather than obscuring it, as does language and identity.