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Bàn Cờ
Thi’s family’s home city, the capital of South Việt Nam and now the largest city of reunified Việt Nam (in which it is called Hồ Chí Minh City). Má and Bố both move here, then meet here in the Teachers College. But on Liberation Day, North Việt Nam government takes control of Sài Gòn. Since Má and Bố were employed by the South Vietnamese government as teachers, they are labeled “ngụy” and subjected to surveillance, which leads them to flee with their children to Cần Thơ and, later, Malaysia.
Sài Gòn Quotes in The Best We Could Do
The The Best We Could Do quotes below are all either spoken by Sài Gòn or refer to Sài Gòn. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 5
Quotes
“But the month I spent in the Communist North had a very different effect on me.”
“It was true that the Việt Minh had won independence by winning the WAR.”
“But the new society I dreamed of didn’t EXIST.”
“Here there was no freedom of thought, no allowance for individuality.”
“I was fourteen. Sài Gòn represented a whole new world of possibility to me.”
“Who would choose a world that had become so narrow, so poor and gray?”
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Chapter 6
Quotes
I imagine that the awe and excitement I felt for New York when I moved there after college—
—must be something like what my father felt when he arrived in Sài Gòn in 1955.
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Chapter 7
Quotes
The American version of this story is one of South Vietnamese cowardice, corruption, and ineptitude…
…South Vietnamese soldiers abandoning their uniforms in the street…
…Americans crying at their wasted efforts to save a country not worth saving.
But Communist forces entered Sài Gòn without a fight, and no blood was shed.
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Sài Gòn Term Timeline in The Best We Could Do
The timeline below shows where the term Sài Gòn appears in The Best We Could Do. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Preface
...American troops fully withdrew. On Liberation Day, April 30, 1975, North Việt Nam officially captured Sài Gòn , and the South Vietnamese government surrendered.
(full context)
Chapter 2: Rewind, Reverse
In 1974 in Sài Gòn , Má has a stillbirth. Nobody knows why this daughter, Thảo, does not survive. A...
(full context)
...she is just 22 when Lan is born, Má has just lost another daughter in Sài Gòn . Some Vietnamese people fear that “giv[ing] a baby a beautiful name [means] jealous spirits...
(full context)
Chapter 5: Either, Or
After Việt Nam’s independence, Bố’s French school is disbanded and he goes to Sài Gòn , where there is still a school for him to attend. But his father, now...
(full context)
...But, having seen the poverty and conformity of the North, Bố wants to return to Sài Gòn in the South. Plus, the land reforms mean his grandmother will lose her property—and the...
(full context)
Chapter 6: The Chessboard
...out over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, alongside Bố standing on the sidewalk in Sài Gòn . She writes that they both felt “awe and excitement” upon moving to “the big...
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...is excited about her first baby with Bố—but when Quyên dies, Má and Bố leave Sài Gòn to go teach in a rural town in the Mekong Delta, which they fell in...
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Chapter 7: Heroes and Losers
...Lost Our Country.” She illustrates “the image that most people know of the fall of Sài Gòn ,” a crowd of people climbing into a helicopter on their roof. But this contrasts...
(full context)
...The family takes a bus to the city of Cần Thơ, leaving Bố’s grandmother in Sài Gòn , in the care of Má’s parents. After a stressful day of waiting, they make...
(full context)
