Narrator
The unnamed narrator is the main character of the novel. As a child, she moved to San Diego where her family struggled and moved around a lot, living among a Vietnamese community.
The neighbors
In the novel, there is a lot of interaction between the family, especially the narrator, and the neighborhood kids that often cause trouble for the community. They function in the novel the same way a choir might function in an epic poem.
Ba
Like the English title Pa, Ba means father. In particular, this 'Ba' is the narrator's father, an alcohol man prone to panic attacks from his PTSD from his service for Vietnam in the Vietnamese War. There is reason to believe that back home, he was part of a criminal gang of primarily disenfranchised Buddhists. Sometimes, when the narrator can't sleep, she finds her Ba meditating with brutal severity, trying to find peace in a maelstrom of frustrating emotions.
Ma
Ma was a Catholic schoolgirl when she met Ba and married him. She doesn't tell the narrator, her daughter, much about their lost son, but at the end of the novel, we learn what his fate might have been. Like Ba, Ma has serious mental health issues, namely her panicky anxiety that causes Ba to feel even worse.
Narrator's brother
The final piece of the puzzled family is the lost brother, who the narrator learns about as an adult, telling the reader about his fate when he fell to his death during his work as a sailor. When the family reclaims his body, the community curses the water of their home.
