The Gangster We Are All Looking For Analysis

In Thuy’s book “The Gangster We Are All Looking For,” the narrator’s older brother drowned in Vietnam. Later, the narrator and her father immigrated to California when she was still a young girl, leaving her mother behind in Vietnam. Her mother eventually joined her and her father in the U.S. As the narrator grew older, she watched her parents as they faced difficulties adapting to their new lives in America and remained haunted by memories of her dead brother. The narrator’s father was especially troubled by his past, and he turned to alcoholism. This caused him to experience drunken rages in which he started to physically abuse his daughter. When she was a teenager, the narrator finally had enough of her father’s grief and anger, and she ran away from home.
Twenty years after her brother’s death, the narrator lives on the East Coast while her parents continue living in California. She is currently an adult and a writer, and she happens to reminisce about an event that occurred the year her mother arrived in the U.S. Her family was reunited and spending its “first spring together in California” (Thuy, 157). One night that spring, the narrator’s father took her and her mother to a beach where they all enjoyed the sight of the ocean
washing fish onto the shore. The narrator’s father points to the fish, and the narrator notes that her family shares a sort of kinship with the fish. Then, the young narrator runs toward the fish as her parents look on. The narrator notes that her father and her mother also fondly remember that event, which is the last scene in the book. I think that the ending of the book means that water connects people to their home and their family, even if they are separated from them by distance and the passage of time.
The narrator and her parents are bonded by their shared experiences involving water, including the one featured in the last scene of Thuy’s book. In Vietnam, they all lived in a coastal village and one of their family members, the narrator’s brother, died when he drowned in the sea. Moreover, the narrator and her parents had to traverse an entire ocean in order to emigrate from Vietnam to America. These shared experiences became unforgettable memories, which keep the family members in each other’s hearts and minds even though they are separated by time and
space.
This is demonstrated when the narrator describes how she continues to think of her parents and her departed brother when she is an adult. It is further established by how she and her deceased sibling linger in her parents’ memories. The narrator and her parents have not seen each other since she ran away from home, and they presently live on opposite sides of America. Her brother died and his body was left in Vietnam, so his family is also separated from him by distance and time. However, the narrator and her parents remember each other as well as her brother, so their family is always connected despite their physical separation. This is why I believe that the book’s ending means that water, and the experiences and memories associated with it, link people to their home and their family.
Finally, I think that the author leaves readers with the last image of the narrator’s family on the beach, watching fish wash onto shore, due to its relation to the immigrant experience. Like the fish, the narrator and her parents are immigrants. They came to the shores of America from a different place and must adapt to their new home. In addition, water connects the fish to each other and to their old home in the ocean while keeping the narrator and her family connected to each other and to Vietnam, their country of origin. This is why the narrator and her parents felt a kind of affinity for the fish. Therefore, the author leaves readers with the final scene because it shows that although immigrants may be physically separated from their families and their homelands, they are spiritually connected by water.