The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The Gangster We Are All Looking ForBy: Thi Diem Thuy Le The highly acclaimed novel that reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country. A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire. Heartbreaking and exhilarating. The New York Times Book Review In 1978 six refugeesa girl, her father, and four unclesare pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the childs imagination, the world is

By: Thi Diem Thuy Le     

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The highly acclaimed novel that reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country.

“A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.” —The New York Times Book Review

In 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.