“Black-Eyed Women”
Stories are material in conserving the refugees’ inherent identities: “My American adolescence was filled with tales of woe like this, all of them proof of what my mother said, that we did not belong here in a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except out stories.” Nguyen’s mother’s narratives are instrumental in his life in a country where he feels like an alien. His family’s refugee standing predisposes him to refugee-linked bigotry. The tales which Nguyen perceives including those of ‘black-eyed women’ during his adolescence impact his outlook on the American dream.
The ‘black-eyed women’ are illustrative of a haunting, unforgettable childhood: “Looking back, however, I could see that we had passed our youth in a haunted country. Our father had been drafted,and we feared that he would never return…Our land’s confirmed residents, they said included the upper half of Korean lieutenant, launched by a mine into the branches of a rubber tree; a scalped black American floating in the creek not far from his downed helicopter…These invaders came to conquer our land and now would never go home, the old ladies said, cackling and exposing lacquered teeth, or so my brother told me.I shivered with delight in the gloom, hearing those black-eyed women with my own ears, and it seemed to me that I would never tell stories like those.” The imagery of the ‘ black-eyed women’ renders them scary. As a child, Nguyen clinched that the ladies were factual and their prophecies were definite. Considering the settings under which Nguyen’s brother re-counted the tales, about the women, Nguyen’s unconscious was occupied with dread for the threat (which the women embody.) Nguyen’s meticulous remembrance regarding the women validates that he has stockpiled all the accounts in his unconscious and they have been contributory in his writing.
“War Years”
“War Years” expounds the foundation of Nguyen’s ideology. First, the thirteen-year old Nguyen covertly endorses Capitalism: “But they’re fighting the Communists…Also known as Chinese and North Koreans, with Cubans and Sandinistas threatening infiltration and invasion from south of our border, as President Reagan explained on World News Tonight. “Shouldn’t we help them?” Nguyen’s argument validates that he does not sponsor communism; consequently, he holds that his mother has an obligation to donate money that would benefit the guerrillas confronting the Communists. Ronald Reagan, who is emblematic of Capitalism, convincingly convinces Nguyen about the wickedness of Communism.
Nguyen is absolutely disenchanted by his parents’ resigned outlook on the battle against communism: “I was outraged, for Mrs. Hoa’s appearance proved the war was not over, in that she had somehow followed us from the old Saigon to the new one. What was more, I had read Newsweek in the dentist’s office and knew we were in the midst of an epic battle against the evil empire of the Soviet Union. But if I was unhappy with my mother’s response, I was even more upset with my father’s.” Nguyen believes in Mrs. Hoa’s proclamation concerning the magnitude of the Vietnam War. He anticipates his parents to exhibit the same conviction but they do not. Manifestly, Nguyen feels that his parents are not committed to subsidizing the war which underwrote their dislocation.
Besides, the literature, which Nguyen studies at school, impacts his ideology: “There was no time to eavesdrop. We had recently read “The Fall of the House of Usher” in Ms. Korman’s class, and the fear of seeing someone undead in the dark hallway made me rush past their door, just as my mother said, “I’ve dealt with worse than her.” Nguyen’s resolution not to eavesdrop is based on the dread of encountering situations analogous to those in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Therefore, his schooling is not in vain considering how positively it profiles his mind-set.
