Summary
In Alabama, Hà’s family gets off the plane giddy. The cowboy takes them to his house, which is huge and surrounded by vivid green grass. He tells them to stay until they feel ready. They unpack, but after one look at the man’s wife, whose expression is contorted into a disapproving knot, they repack and move to the basement, where they never see the wife. She insists the family stay out of the neighbors’ eyes. Hà’s mother says they must make learning English their first priority. Quang teaches them to add an "s" to nouns to make them plural. Glass becomes glass-es. Hà has to push the s out of her teeth.
They live on rice, soy sauce, and canned corn. Their cowboy brings them a bucket of fried chicken, which makes Khôi recoil, as he has vowed never to eat anything with wings. They eat and the skin tastes crunchy and salty and spicy, but the meat itself makes Vū gag. Quang explains they are used to fresh-killed backyard-raised chicken, which tastes sweet and smells of meadows. Hà thinks the cowboy’s chicken tastes as dull as bread soaked in water, but she pretends it is delicious. Out the window, Hà sees vast lawns, windows with sealed curtains, cement lands where no one walks; a quiet, clean loneliness.
Their cowboy finds them a house to rent on Princess Anne Road; he pays three months rent ahead. Hà’s mother finds his generosity shocking, but Quang explains the American government gives sponsors money; the program is to ease the guilt of losing the war. Hà’s mother says people living on others’ goodwill cannot afford political opinions. The house is spacious and has a washing machine. The shower is like a monsoon rain. But Hà doesn’t like the unmatched furniture. Her mother reminds her to be grateful. Her mother writes to Hà’s father’s brother’s ancestral home in the North to let them know their address in America. Hà struggles with which nouns need an "s" to be made plural, confused that deer remains singular. She struggles to read baby books in English.
Their cowboy sponsor takes Hà to register for school. He shows her the route to walk to school, using flowers as turning markers before arriving at a fat red brick building. They do paperwork with a school official. On the way home she asks if he has a horse, making the "hee hee hee" sound for a horse. Quang says Mr. Johnson doesn’t have a horse, and that horses in America go neigh, not hee. Hà finds English illogical.
In September Hà starts school while her mother starts sewing at a factory and Quang repairs cars. Because their school years were interrupted, Vū repeats twelfth grade, while Hà must repeat fourth. On the first day of class, Hà is the first kid to arrive: she meets her teacher, Miss Scott. They try to teach each other how to pronounce their names. Standing before the class, Hà reflects on the other students’ different hair and skin colors; she is the only one with straight black hair on olive skin. In the cafeteria, she notices that the light-skinned kids sit on one side of the room while the dark-skinned kids sit on the other.
A bell announces it is time to go outside. On the playground, a pink-skinned boy pulls Hà’s hair and pokes her skin. Later he and two friends follow Hà home. She walks fast but doesn’t want to let him see her run. At home, Khôi is not talking, her mother has fingers bandaged from the electric sewing machine at work, Quang’s fingernails are rimmed with black oil, and Vū is whistling. In the middle of the night, Hà wakes Vū to tell him about having been bullied. Vū says to ignore him. Vū says someone called him Ching Chong, and so Vū pretended to do a flying kick at him, not to hurt the boy but to scare him. Vū says he’ll teach Hà self-defense. The next day Khôi gives her a ride to school on his bicycle. He says he’ll bring her every day and pick her up, too.
In class, Miss Scott points to Hà and asks her to say the alphabet and to count. The class claps. Hà wishes she could explain that she already knows fractions, and how to purify river water. She hates to feel dumb. She wishes her father would appear in class and start speaking beautiful English. She wishes she was still smart. Vū asks the family to call him Vū Lee, after Bruce Lee. At school, Hà hides when not in class.
People throw eggs at Hà’s house, then toilet paper, then a brick through the window. Quang refuses to translate what the note attached to it says. Their host calls the police, who say to stay inside. Hà’s mother decides they must meet the families they live near. The cowboy leads, giving them each hats to be tilted in greeting. Only Hà wears the hat. People slam their doors in the family’s faces. But an older woman named Mrs. Washington hugs them. She is a widow and retired teacher. She volunteers to tutor the family.
After school every day, Mrs. Washington makes Hà memorize a new word. Hà learns a, an, and the—words which do not exist in Vietnamese. On the ride home from school, Hà learns from Khôi that people also make fun of him at school, teasing his name and asking if he eats dog meat and lived in a jungle. She understands now why they are being teased; she wishes she could go back to not understanding.
Their cowboy suggests they accompany him to the Del Ray Southern Baptist Church. They are put in shapeless white gowns and the plump pastor waits for them in a tiny pool, where he dips their heads under the water. Then they get dressed and stand on stage, where people line up to kiss their cheeks. The cowboy’s wife now smiles at them. Hà gets goosebumps when she realizes they will be coming back every Sunday. At home Hà’s mother clangs a spoon against a glass bowl, making do without a brass gong. Instead of jasmine incense, her mother burns dried orange peels. At night Hà’s mother comes in her room and, thinking Hà is asleep, asks aloud where her husband is, and tells him to come home and see how the children have grown. She says it’s more difficult here than they imagined.
Analysis
Though Hà and her family are giddy to arrive in the US southern state of Alabama, pleased by size of the property and by their cowboy host’s generosity, they quickly encounter their host’s wife’s disapproval. In an instance of situational irony, it appears as if the host hasn’t informed his wife that he was bringing home of family of Vietnamese refugees.
The family adapts by lying low in the basement and obeying the wife’s request to stay out of the neighbors’ eyes. They move forward with English, as Hà’s mother knows language will be the most difficult and important barrier to overcome. Hà struggles to comprehend the nuances of English.
As she adapts to her new life in America, Hà experiences more cultural differences. The chicken, for instance, is slaughtered and eaten fresh in Vietnam, leading to much better-tasting flesh. Outside the window, Hà sees open space with no people out interacting, as though loneliness itself is embedded in the environment.
When their host helps the family rent their own house, Quang explains that the man’s generosity is only possible because of a government incentive program that pays to help resettle refugees; he believes this is the US government’s way of making amends for failing to defeat the North Vietnamese.
At school, Hà witnesses more of America’s cultural nuances. She also experiences racial divide for the first time: through the innocent eyes of a child, and with no knowledge of America’s legacy of slavery and laws that mandated racial segregation, she simply sees white students sitting among other white students, and black students sitting with other black students. With Pink Boy’s bullying, Hà herself becomes the target of direct racial prejudice, though she is ignorant of why he teases and abuses her. Hà also experiences racial prejudice from Miss Scott, who means well but is condescending as she applauds Hà’s demonstration of rudimentary knowledge. Because of the language barrier, Miss Scott assumes Hà is less intelligent than she truly is.
As the family adapts to their new lives, the house becomes the target of racist pranks that escalate in threat level. The solution—meeting the neighbors—results in more overt racism in the form of slammed doors. However, not everyone is prejudiced: the family is pleased to meet Mrs. Washington, a generous and helpful person. When Khôi explains that he is also the target of bullying, Hà finally understands that she is being harassed due to her ethnic difference, and she wishes she could go back to being naïve.
As another solution to dealing with racism and the cultural differences in Alabama, their host suggests that Hà’s family go to church to be baptized. Hà sees the ritual only for the physical actions of submerging people's heads underwater, understanding none of the metaphorical significance of being reborn as Christians. But having undergone the ritual, their host’s wife now approves of them and embraces them. That night Hà’s mother continues with her Buddhist rituals, adapting to not having incense and gongs by making do with bowls and orange peels.
