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Bố’s Grandmother
A prominent engineer who works for the French government in colonial Cambodia and Việt Nam. Despite his job, he still resents French colonialism and recognizes that the French treat native Vietnamese people as second-class citizens in their own country. At the same time, he thinks it is imperative that Má (the most academically talented of his children) go to French schools, since this offers her the best chance of advancement in the future. These tensions reveal the contradictory nature of foreign domination in Việt Nam: in order to achieve freedom from oppression, people had to use the same tools that were oppressing them. When Má’s father gets older, he and his wife (Má’s mother) care for Bố’s elderly grandmother, and then eventually move to the United States.
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Má’s Father Character Timeline in The Best We Could Do
The timeline below shows where the character Má’s Father appears in The Best We Could Do. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Rewind, Reverse
Thi remembers meeting Má's mother and Má's father and her uncle Hải when she was 12, after they moved to the United States....
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Chapter 5: Either, Or
...Thi very little—she says more to Travis. Má is born in Cambodia in 1943, where her father is an important engineer with a well-paid government job. But Má’s family has to flee...
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...in Đà Lạt, where “everyone is a complete FRANCOPHILE!” She cannot stand it and calls her father to take her home.
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Thi notes that Má’s father had once suffered a nervous breakdown because of a Frenchman.” One of his bosses, who...
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Chapter 6: The Chessboard
Alone, Thi confuses herself trying to clarify whether her father “hate[s] the general” and “like[s] Communism or not.” She is disturbed by “the contradiction in...
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