In The Gangster We Are all Looking For by Lê Thị Diễm Thúy, displacement shapes every part of the narrator’s life as a Vietnamese refugee growing up in America. The family’s journey from war-torn Vietnam to the U.S. leaves them suspended between worlds, unable to fully belong anywhere. Their new environment is supposed to offer safety, yet it often amplifies their sense of not fitting in. The immigrant experience becomes a constant negotiation—wanting to create a new life while being haunted by a past that cannot be left behind.
The narrator and her family struggle to rebuild their lives after fleeing Vietnam. Their escape across the sea becomes a trauma that follows them into America, captured in the line: “Everywhere we go, we are followed by the salt of the sea.” Even in their new home, they feel unrooted and out of place, surrounded by an environment that never fully becomes theirs—“Our house was filled with things that didn’t belong to us.” The narrator grows up between cultures, trying to inhabit an American identity that feels borrowed, explaining that “I learned English like picking up someone else’s coat and wearing it every day.” Her father, unable to leave the past behind, moves through their new world as if still trapped in the journey—“My father moved through the world as if he were still at sea.” Through these images, Thúy shows that displacement is not just physical but emotional and generational; the family carries Vietnam within them even as they attempt to belong in America.
Works Cited:
Lê, Thi Diem Thúy. The Gangster We Are All Looking For. Anchor Books, 2003.
