Ru Flashcards
,Quote: The police were ordered to allow all boats carrying Vietnamese of Chinese background to leave “in secret”We called on the genes of my ancestors so that we could leave with the tacit consent of the police. Themes of identity. Ahn Tinh’s family was Vietnamese but they called upon their Chinese heritage of siblings of her grandparents in order to get by police to leave in secret
Analysis: Punctuation here with the scare quotes around in secret is very intentional to let readers know that it was not really a secret to everyone in Vietnam and that is exactly how her family knew how to get by acting as Chinese would let them escape peacefully
Quote: Ahn Tinh comments how her friend Johanne wanted me to go to private school with her” but instead every afternoon she “travelled in a cube van with fifty other Vietnamese to work illegally in the fields, earning a few extra dollars”
I
Analysis: The use of diction here subtly depicts how restrictive society was in Quebec as An Tinh had to go through illegal avenues to earn money, implying that legal ones were not available likely because she was an immigrant as many other Vietnamese went with her.
It also shows great mental strength that she passed up the fun opportunity to go to private school with her friend in order to support her family
Shows how not well off they were as a few extra dollars for difficult and tiring work was enough incentive for her sacrifice
Characterizes her as persistent, she finds a means to get what she needs even in difficult circumstances
Quote: When they were immigrating, Ahn Tinh described the uncertainty and long days of unknowing as “no one knew if we were heading for the heavens or plunging into the water’s depths
Analysis: Diction, plunging is forceful heading is peaceful, juxtaposition of vocabulary
Quote: Fear was transformed into a hundred faced monster who sawed off our legs
Analysis: Metaphor, personification, allows reader to really understand and connect to the protagonist and how she was feeling
Exceptionally brave and characterizes her parents as taking action, doing what they can with what they have. Not the best circumstances to leave the country but they sacrificed
Quote: In a restaurant man tells her [you’re] too fat to be Vietnamese” because she looks as if she had been weighed now by entitlement confidence to her voice, determination to my actions”. The American dream made me believe I could have everything. Vietnamese are characterization by their fragility, their uncertainty, their fears” and she no longer had that (pg 77)
Analysis: She was brave to start over trying to achieve a new dream. Shows how there is a struggle for identity when you overcome limitations because you change who you were
Struggles of identity for immigrants: not belonging in new one but fading from old one
Use of anaphora to emphasize how those characterisitics no longer belong to her but the new ones do
Identity is not about fitting within a sterotype, it’s all up to you not what other people say you are
Quote: Every day Ahn Tinh used to have soup, vermicelli and pork and when she arrived to Quebec she couldn’t find a good subsoitutude so it’s very rare that I have breakfast”
Analysis: The importance of setting, it gives a sense of familiarity that was taken away from her
Some changes are hard to adapt to
Quote: “There will never be a brick wall in my house. I don’t share the love for brick walls of the people around me. They calim that bricks make a room warm.
Analysis: A brick wall is simply an object until there are memories attached to its meaning. Diction, symbolism. It can symbolize protection but also separation
Tension because these past experiences define how you look at things, she can no longer see brick walls with the innocence of warmth that those around her can because it symbolizes her freedom being taken away. Tension because those in her new environment do not have those memories of the old environment
lack of shared experiences
Quote: My mother had taken on the duties of man of the house. “All the fun of childhood slipped between her fingers while, in the name of proprietary , she was forbidding here sisters to dance (pg 62) She started to learn how to dance and started “to live, to let herself be carried away”
Metaphor
Quote: However, one man went back “to fetch the gold …in the boat’s fuel tank” and “never came back”. An Tinh explains, “that memory [is] definitely…why I never leave a place with more than one suitcase”
Analysis: Indirect characterization to reveal the reasoning behind an unconvential behaviour, how pivotal this moment was emotionally in her relationships too
Quote: A single mark on the skin and our entire shared history was spread out between two gas pumps…
Analysis: Thuy’s metaphor with the phrase “spread out” speaks to how seeing the scar prompted vulnerability because these two strangers suddenly knew a great deal of the other’s experiences without any words needing to be exchanged, as these experiences are unique to their shared culture and society.
these physical and emotional scars do not just have to be reminders of painful memories, they can be methods of recollecting positive memories that were also shared, like New Years traditions.
Quote: “My father had made plans, should our family be captured by Communists or pirates, to put us to sleep forever, like Sleeping Beauty, with cyanide pills”.
Analysis: euphemism with a fairytale allusion to really mean death, which shadows her innocence as a child
The aspect of motives behind characters actions is better understood with the historical context of what the communists did to the Vietnamese people and how they took away their independence. They might have been tortured or even killed, and they would rather die than face them.
Quote: When the Communists entered Saigon, my family hnaded over half our property because we’d become vulnerable. A year later the authorities from the new Communist administration arrived to clean out our half of the house, to clean us out.
Analysis: The phrase “to clean us out” is symbolic of how people’s belongings represent more than just objects, but also parts of the owner’s identity, and that removing one’s property is like removing the proof that people were there.
Quote: An Tinh describes how inspectors were allowed to “strip them of everything they owned till the very last minute, to the point of humiliation”
Analysis: The intentional use of diction with the verb strip and the hyperbole “till the very last minute” portrays the government as ruthless, in that they have their own agenda, and it does not matter who gets harmed in the process. It shows it is irrelevant to abide by the government’s terms, as people will be treated like the enemy either way. This creates feelings of hopelessness for the country, because it feels like there is no safe identity that would escape the frightening government.
Quote: It was the norm for hunger to replace reason, for uncertainty to usurp morality, but the reverse was rarely true” (pg 88/89) Ahn Phi and his mother were the exception. He said that if he didn’t pay for [their] passage, he would’nt have a little girl to tease. He is a hero without knowing it, without wanting to be”
Analysis: Characterizes Ahn Phi and his mother as exceptionally noble given the circumstances of how much that gold could have meant to his family so much that he was willing to risk his own life and be noble in order to save her life, as it was these gold coins that ultimately let her family escape Vietnam
- Shows that heroes are not only the ones who go to fight in the war, but also the ones back home who make meaningful sacrifices
Provide hope amongst all the despair that is being talked about, to break free of norms and do what is right, think for yourself
Quote: Ahn Tinh’s mother’s accomplice gave them all hope in the refugee camp, he raised the sky” and anaphora with without his face, like “without his face we would certainly have lost the desire to reach our hands out and catch our dreams, denoting his importance in their lives in giving them hope
Analysis: Anaphora and metaphor, he gave them hope
Hope isn’t something tangible you can describe but the light feeling he gave them amongst all the darkness can best be illustrated through the metaphor
