We Should Never Meet

This week we read the book “We Should Never Meet” by Amy Phan. The book was unique in that its eight chapters each revolved around different central characters. At first it seemed like the stories would be unrelated vignettes sharing only thematic similarities, but after a few chapters the book starts coming together like a puzzle, weaving familiar characters and locations in and out of its narrative in a mostly satisfying way. The thread that binds each of the eight chapters together is Operation Babylift. This real-life operation was carried out at the end of the Vietnam War between April 2-26, 1975. Under Operation Babylift, thousands of babies and children were transported from Vietnam to foreign countries, primarily the United States, after the fall of Saigon. The first chapter sees a Vietnamese lady give birth to an infant and drop it off at a nearby orphanage run by Catholic nuns, as she is unable to care for it due to the war and its devastating effects on the Vietnamese people. Later in the book the time shifts to the 90s and focuses on a group of Vietnamese teenagers and young adults who came to Little Saigon in Orange County, California via Operation Babylift as babies. These Vietnamese-American youth become the core characters in the story, although the perspective switches between four of them (Kim, Vinh, Mai, and Huan) as well as to other characters and times, such as a Nun and her ex-fiance in Vietnam during the war. These four main characters grow up to be very different people, with Vinh and Kim turning out to be heartless criminals and Mai and Huan avoiding crime and focusing on a better future despite difficult conditions. While the gangster Vinh was just a rotten person to the core, I feel that Kim could have turned out differently if her circumstances had been different. She was raped by her foster father and ended up moving around between different families, never finding a true home with an American family the way Mai and Huan did. However, I believe it was her attachment to the vile and manipulative Vinh that sealed Kim’s fate. While it was sad to see her be influenced by Vinh, she treated Mai badly instead of escaping Vinh’s hold on her through her friendship with Mai. Had she focused on her friendship with Mai and abandoned Vinh and his life of crime and violence, she may have been able to build a better life for herself. My only big complaint about this book was with the time jump in the last chapter, as I wanted to know what happened immediately after the events of Chapter 6 with Mai’s falling out with Kim, Kim seemingly going back to Vinh, and Mai yelling at her foster father. Overall this book was educational and interesting, humanizing not only the Vietnam War but the legacy of the people affected by it both at home and abroad.