"Out from the darkness of the sea, wave after wave of small, luminous bodies washed to shore."
This is the author's description of the deposition of her brother's corpse from the water where he died. Because of the context, the reader is supposed to understand this as a story that the narrator learned sometime during her adulthood, so not only do the words capture the literal image of his body being pulled out of the sea, but also her own concept of him, having reemerged from her subconscious memories of him from her girlhood, into her waking daily memory, hence the body is 'luminous,' because she was enlightened to his untimely fate.
"The year I left home, my father and I would sit at the kitchen table in the evenings and pass the silence back and forth, like smoke."
This is an indication that the true nature of the relationship between the narrator and her plagued father was silent. Through the silence, there is a connection, a back and forth like friends sharing a pipe. There is love between them, and she keeps him company in the dark nightmare of his daily struggle.
"He made himself small, so that in the world there was very little left of him, even while within me his hunger grew."
The hunger in question is the hunger for life and the power of the narrator's understanding of her father as an unusually strong man, having survived the constant emotion onslaught of life. The daughter feels she has inherited the fire from his will to live, even as he fades away.
"When I grow up I am going to be the gangster we are all looking for."
This might represent a slight disappointment. By saying, "I'm going to fill a void," the author brings our attention the absence they felt. Her father used to be a force to be reckoned with, but now, in the difficulties of American life, the family feels as though the father has lost something essential. By the daughter's confession to fill that void, she is choosing hope in the future instead of the dread of her father's life. She is choosing to become the kind of person that can meet her own needs and get what she wants out of life.
"Paper fragments floating across the surface of the sea. There is not a trace of blood anywhere except here, in my throat, where I am telling you all this."
This quote deals with the interpretation of the photo of her grandparents. The narrator is conceding that, yes, they are long gone in another country on the other side of the world, except that she is telling us about them. That act of defiance and resilience is shown in the blood of the speaker's throat, or in her life force, perhaps.
