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Vivien
In “Black-Eyed Women,” the ghostwriter’s brother appears mostly as a literal ghost, after having been killed at age fifteen while trying to flee Vietnam on a boat. He and the ghostwriter had been very close as children, only two years apart. They would play together in the bomb shelter the ghostwriter’s father had built. When the family tried to escape to America, pirates had invaded their boat. The ghostwriter’s brother had tried to disguise the ghostwriter as a boy so that she would not be kidnapped by the pirates, but one of them discovered the ruse. The ghostwriter’s brother tried to protect her, but was knocked dead by the butt of the pirate’s rifle, and the ghostwriter was then raped as a result. She is haunted by the death of her brother, constantly questioning why it was that she lived and he died, but she is even more haunted by the possibilities that they lost—by the years that they would never have together.
The Ghostwriter’s Brother Quotes in The Refugees
The The Refugees quotes below are all either spoken by The Ghostwriter’s Brother or refer to The Ghostwriter’s Brother. 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:
).
Black-Eyed Women
Quotes
My American adolescence was filled with tales of woe like this, all of them proof of what my mother said, that we did not belong here. In a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except our stories.
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I wept for him and for me, for all the years we could have had together but didn’t, for all the words never spoken between my mother, my father, and me. Most of all, I cried for those other girls who had vanished and never come back, including myself.
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Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more. We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.
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The Ghostwriter’s Brother Quotes in The Refugees
The The Refugees quotes below are all either spoken by The Ghostwriter’s Brother or refer to The Ghostwriter’s Brother. 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:
).
Black-Eyed Women
Quotes
My American adolescence was filled with tales of woe like this, all of them proof of what my mother said, that we did not belong here. In a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except our stories.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I wept for him and for me, for all the years we could have had together but didn’t, for all the words never spoken between my mother, my father, and me. Most of all, I cried for those other girls who had vanished and never come back, including myself.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Stories are just things we fabricate, nothing more. We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
