This e book is advised in twin timelines, and it’s one which comes with a pre-story content material warning—it’s not a simple learn, so take care.
The first timeline is in 1999, in San Jose, California, and it follows Jane, who’s 17, nearly to graduate from highschool, and who has a giant secret she’s been maintaining: she obtained into her dream faculty and will probably be shifting away at the finish of the summer time. It is a huge secret for a number of causes, together with the indisputable fact that she’s type of the glue holding her household collectively. Mother disappeared, and Jane has stepped in to be her little brother Paul’s rock. She feels obligated to be that method due to their demanding and, at occasions, bodily abusive father. She is scared to inform Paul she’s leaving as a result of she’s fearful he’ll really feel like she’s abandoning him and leaving him to fend for himself. At the identical time, Jane is aware of that is her alternative to lastly reside her personal life relatively than reside the life she believes she’s speculated to reside. Plus, she’ll get away from the inflexible expectations of her father.
The second timeline is 1975, and it follows Phuc, who’s trying to go away his war-torn nation of Vietnam throughout the warfare. It’s been a brutal warfare and one the place even household has been break up of their loyalties. However for Phuc, getting out of Vietnam just isn’t simple in the least. Each try to get out has left him battered or at risk of shedding his life. When he lastly does get the likelihood to get out, even the boat turns into a spot of worry. He witnesses homicide, demise, and the limits of human struggling—all of which he feels deeply and which embeds in him in every try to flee. When he lastly will get to America, he marries and strikes to San Jose. However even when there is no such thing as a warfare in America, he carries with him the burden of survival, in addition to the challenges that come from being an immigrant.
Phuc is Jane and Paul’s father, and this isn’t a spoiler— early on that you just’re seeing each side of what has been a traumatic immigration expertise, one riddled with violence, ache, and struggling. This break up perspective provides perception into why Phuc behaves how he does towards his kids, by no means apologizing for it however giving it context; it additionally provides Jane rather a lot to consider in the case of why she feels the pull to be as just like her white American classmates as attainable and eschew her Vietnamese heritage. This can shift and alter by means of the story as Jane is ready to reconnect with household abroad and involves see that her greatest pal—additionally a second-generation immigrant—could also be misguided in her makes an attempt to overlook her household’s previous.
It is a sluggish learn, with out romance, and it’s a highly effective story of household, immigration, trauma and its impact on psychological well being, intergenerational trauma, and what it’s to make a life for your self when the world has been the furthest factor from form for you. Each Jane and Phuc are deeply flawed characters, however their flaws are what makes their tales so compelling.