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The Ghostwriter’s Brother
The mother of the boy who narrates “War Years.” She had fled Vietnam with the boy’s father and the boy after the Communists had seized her husband’s auto parts store. She now owns a grocery store, the New Saigon Market, with her husband in San Jose, California. In the story, the boy’s mother is at the center of two conflicts. The first is with her son, as she is trying to maintain the boy’s sense of his Vietnamese culture and she herself is reluctant to assimilate. The second is with a neighbor, Mrs. Hoa, who asks for money to support a South Vietnamese guerilla army training in Thailand. The boy’s mother at first refuses because she believes trying to win back the country is a lost cause. But gradually she relents when she hears that Mrs. Hoa’s husband and son went missing after the war, and she sees how Mrs. Hoa is haunted by the possibility of getting them back. But after she gives Mrs. Hoa the money, she sees the harm in being stuck in the past, and she realizes that moving forward with her son means assimilating into American culture to some degree.
The Boy’s Mother Quotes in The Refugees
The The Refugees quotes below are all either spoken by The Boy’s Mother or refer to The Boy’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
War Years
Quotes
“And what about bologna?”
“What?” My mother’s brow furrowed. “If I can’t pronounce it, my customers won’t buy it.”
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More than all those people starved by famine, it was the thought of my mother not remembering what she looked like as a little girl that saddened me.
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It was a trivial secret, but one I would remember as vividly as my feeling that while some people are haunted by the dead, others are haunted by the living.
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“Go buy,” she said in English, motioning me inside. Whenever she spoke in English, her voice took on a higher pitch, as if instead of coming from inside her, the language was outside, squeezing her by the throat.
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The Boy’s Mother Quotes in The Refugees
The The Refugees quotes below are all either spoken by The Boy’s Mother or refer to The Boy’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
War Years
Quotes
“And what about bologna?”
“What?” My mother’s brow furrowed. “If I can’t pronounce it, my customers won’t buy it.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
More than all those people starved by famine, it was the thought of my mother not remembering what she looked like as a little girl that saddened me.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
It was a trivial secret, but one I would remember as vividly as my feeling that while some people are haunted by the dead, others are haunted by the living.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Go buy,” she said in English, motioning me inside. Whenever she spoke in English, her voice took on a higher pitch, as if instead of coming from inside her, the language was outside, squeezing her by the throat.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
