Miss Lien:

• “The oldest of seven children, Lien was hardly ever alone.” (pg 4) Since it was already established that she was having a baby, obviously she did manage to be alone at some point. Was it because of someone taking advantage of her or because she was a “little slut” as the people on page 3 so rudely put it?
• “But Lien knew it wasn’t her mother’s age that worried them.” (pg 7) My first thought was that she had cheated on Lien’s father or something, and that was why they reacted strangely to the pregnancy. It wasn’t until they started talking about a war that I realized they were probably worried about safety.
• “The midwife spread her lips, revealing black-lacquered teeth. Lien realized she must have come from a family of wealth.” (pg 8) What is put on the teeth to make them black, and what makes that a sign of wealth? How did a custom like that come about?
• “I wasn’t sure about looking at my first either, knowing I had to give it up.” (pg 12) Are these girls being purposefully impregnated by men – possibly American soldiers? Or are they doing this themselves because they’re desperate and they don’t have any other ways to make money? Or is this place some sort of shelter for pregnant girls? I’m confused.

We Should Never Meet:

• My first impression of Kim’s relationship with Vinh is that it seems very uneven. Even though they’re broken up (pg 28), she’s still reliant on him for a place to live and he makes her borrow his beeper? It seems like he might be controlling or potentially abusive, but maybe I’m just reading too much into it.
• “But this woman only nodded at her, maybe even felt sorry for her because of her mixed race, and turned her back, expecting Kim to simply walk out, unpunished.” (pg 31) Why would the woman feel sorry for her because she was mixed race? With the mention of “beepers”, I assumed this is set sometime in the past few decades, so was there really that much of a stigma around that this recently?
• “Here, there were no foster parents to tell her what to do. She could watch as much television as she wanted.” (pg 32) I’m assuming she must have left the foster care system fairly recently, because otherwise the novelty of this would likely have worn off already. Once you’ve been out of a controlling situation like that for a while, you stop thinking about it as much and your own habits feel more natural. Alternatively, Vinh’s attempts to control her keep these thoughts at the forefront of her mind, and that’s why she still thinks in these terms?
• (pg 35) Even though she said they were broken up earlier, they’re sleeping in the same bed and Vinh is trying to get frisky with her? Earlier she had mentioned how he thought there was a chance that they could get back together, but this makes it sound like he’s not even “aware” that they’re broken up, whether because he’s in denial and/or thought she was joking, or because he’s a jerk and doesn’t care about her feelings.

The Delta:

• Is this convent the same orphanage from Lien’s story that she left her baby at? Lien had mentioned that they don’t turn any babies away and there were nuns there, and Phuong in this story says that the convent shelters more babies than “the Immaculate Souls orphanage” (pg 59).
• “The birds had to come to avoid suspicion.” (pg 63) Is it a secret that the convent houses babies or something? Or just a secret that they’re moving them to a different orphanage? Why would they need to “avoid suspicion”?
• “Several were Amerasian, bastards of the American soldiers, both black and white. …Phuong said their only chance was international adoption in America or Australia. They could never have a life here.” (pg 64) Is that why Kim from the previous story was sent to America? And was she perhaps one of these children? Why couldn’t they have a life there? Was there a lot of hate and resentment towards America in particular, or do they just not like mixed race in general?
• “You may be a servant of your Catholic god, but there is no compassion in you. Letting babies starve like this, you could never be a good mother.” (pg 72) This is an incredible difference from Phuong as a child, who apparently couldn’t bear to see sick kids. What would cause such a huge personality difference like this?

Visitors:

• I was under the impression that Nguyen was a common surname, but this character seems to be solely referred to as Bac Nguyen. Is Bac his first name and Nguyen his surname, or is it all meant to be one name and that’s why it’s written like that? Or is Bac some kind of honorific rather than a first name, like calling somebody “Mister”?
• “Bac Nguyen felt embarrassed wasting the young man’s time in silly conversation. The boy needed to study.” (pg 91) I thought it was interesting that he thinks that asking for help finding an address would be considered “silly conversation”. Does he just place that much importance on education, or is this a matter of pride and not wanting to look stupid?
• “I wasn’t meaning the Communists. Oh, Bac Nguyen said, slightly confused, I just assumed- I was talking about the Americans.” (pg 94) Why does the boy blame Americans rather than Communists, or even rather than including Communists? What context about (what I’m assuming is meant to refer to) the Vietnam War am I missing that would explain this?
• “But here, even if one owned a home, one still had to pay for it every month.” (pg 94) Is this a more recent development in America, or have mortgages always been a thing here? How do people pay for houses in Vietnam that’s different and would prevent the need of things like mortgages to be invented? Do they have things like property taxes and such like we do here, or was/is that as foreign to them as mortgages?

Gates of Saigon:

• It’s implied on page 117 that the organization that Hoa works for often takes American volunteers? In earlier stories I thought it was established that Americans weren’t very popular, if not outright unwelcome, and even here infants who are mixed race seem to be singled out, so it surprised me that there is apparently a fairly steady stream of American volunteers.
• On pages 118 and 119, Steven asks Hoa a lot of questions, and it reminded me of something I heard once where Americans are often seen as very loud by some or most other countries. Cultural differences could make something like asking a lot of questions seem excessively nosy even if it was intended as curiosity and friendliness.
• “There had been suggestions to clean out and refill the rotted swimming pool in the backyard, especially in the summer months, but some were afraid of the younger children falling in.” (pg 121) First of all, I thought it was interesting that the orphanage has a swimming pool, because in media you often see orphanages being depicted as these awful Oliver Twist-type places, even American ones. Also, this confused me because wouldn’t young children be at the same risk of falling in a pool regardless of whether it was filled with water or not? Or am I missing something here?
• When it said that the landlady she was renting from was disapproving of her work at the orphanage on page 130, I assumed it was because the landlady doesn’t like mixed race children or something like that. It surprised me when it was revealed on page 131 that the reason she doesn’t like Hoa’s work is because she doesn’t like that they’re sending babies “out of their home country” to the Americans, who she thinks will hate them. It makes sense in hindsight, but I guess the way people were talking about the mixed race kids in the previous stories made me assume things.

Emancipation:

• “When people stared, she assumed she didn’t measure up, and Mai hated feeling inadequate, especially for things that were out of her control. She’d given up long ago trying to appear pretty.” (pg 146) Impossible beauty standards for women can be incredibly detrimental to mental health and self-confidence, but I imagine that for someone who is an ethnicity other than white it would be even more damaging. Things that white women take for granted in terms of appearances, even small things like hair thickness and type, can and will affect someone’s ability to feel like they’re fitting in or that they’re attractive because they’re constantly told that to be attractive you have to look exactly like women in magazines, who are almost always white people.
• “They were staring at her, amazed at what twenty minutes had revealed that nine years previously hadn’t.” (pg 148) Even though Mai had said that her essay had been exaggerated to play up the bad parts of growing up since she had a good life with her foster parents, this seems to indicate that her relationship with them still isn’t particularly close. They took time off work to listen to her read her essay, but they didn’t know very much about what she had experienced even though they raised her for the past nine years?
• “Self-conscious, Mai put her hands behind her back, hoping they wouldn’t ask to look at her wrists like the social worker did.” (pg 154) What’s wrong with her wrists that she doesn’t want them to look at them? Was she hurting herself or is it something else?
• “This was a setting for romantic dinners, not high school birthdays.” (pg 156) This seems to represent how Mai feels out of place compared to Tiffany and Huan, as they both heard from and got into their desired colleges, while she is still waiting to hear back from admissions. They also don’t seem to understand her foster home situation at all, which would only serve to make her feel even more like an imposter or outsider.

Bound:

• “The baby lay twisted on the center’s side of the gate.” (pg 176) This sentence was so short and to-the-point that it took me a bit to realize that the mother had thrown her baby over the fence. Even the other people in the crowd, who were also desperate for the orphanage to take their children, seem horrified at this, but then they seem to go back to doing what they were before even after she takes the baby inside? Were things like this common, or were they just so desperate that they forced themselves not to care?
• “A large group of relatives and friends gathered at the airport to say good-bye, tight smiles across their faces, loudly agreeing that what Bridget was doing was admirable and Christian. Ronald knew they were lying, disapproving of a young mother leaving to enter a war zone that had become so unpopular.” (pg 179) What makes volunteering to help orphaned babies “Christian”, and why is this stated in a way that makes it seem like being “admirable” is an insult or something? It kind of makes it seem like they think it’s admirable to try and help orphans, but only in a “this poor third-world country with all these starving babies definitely needs God to save them” sort of way, kind of like how when I was growing up I’d always hear about starving kids in Africa. This just feel off to me in a way I don’t know how to explain.
• “Upon seeing him, she immediately knew he was going to be her son.” (pg 182) Earlier she had been telling her husband about a “surprise”, so she obviously didn’t consult him before deciding she was going to keep Huan. It’s a big commitment to adopt a child, and considering how he sounded kind of distant on the phone, he may not want to keep Huan, and that’s really something both parents should talk about and agree on beforehand, or it can be a disaster in waiting.
• “These children’s lives are more important to me than hamburgers. Steven stared at her for a moment and turned to ask Harold about their flight itineraries” (pg 188) This statement from Bridget seems like she has a clear sense of righteousness or something, but in the context of the story she left America when her daughter was two and hasn’t seen her daughter at all for three years because she keeps deciding not to go back yet. This makes it sound like she cares more about the orphans than her own daughter, and it kind of seems like there’s a lot of moral ambiguity here.

Motherland:

• “It will be good for him to get away and appreciate what he does have, which is so much.” (pg 217) Huan’s mother seems extremely ignorant of how her actions come across, and in general it seems like she’s holding him up as a prize to say how good she is for taking in a poor orphan. All the white people on the tour group come across as kind of condescending and casually (albeit probably unintentionally) racist, but Gwen seems just as bad even though her son is half Vietnamese.
• “She wants to know why her race is being unilaterally rejected.” (pg 219) She claims to be supportive of Huan, but it is increasingly obvious that she’s expecting him to act perfectly white and fit in the mold that she expects of him. Even though he’s half black and half Vietnamese, his mother seems more concerned with the fact that he’s not dating white girls like she wants than his actual happiness.
• “You know, we arranged reunion tours for the adoptees last year, Sophie says, looking at Huan. I thought we sent the information packet to you. He feels the others’ eyes on him, expecting an explanation for the rejection.” (pg 228) Everyone around Huan seems to expect him to be curious about his homeland and where he came from, but considering how he has reacted so far and the things he’s thought, it’s obvious that nobody has bothered to ask him how he feels about any of this. He obviously feels like he has to make excuses in order to avoid arguments with them about why he should be happy about learning about himself and stuff, and that’s a lot of unnecessary pressure that could be avoided if the people who claim to love him would give him a little more respect.
• “You’re taking it for granted. Right, I should be more grateful. …Really, I’m being a jerk. I don’t mean to snap.” (pg 234) This seems to be a recurring theme in this particular story, that because Huan was adopted by an American couple he should be grateful. Because he gets to find out his history, he should be grateful. He’s not allowed to be upset because he had it so much “better” than these people, so he’s being unreasonable, he’s being a jerk. Essentially they’re telling him that he’s not allowed to have feelings about these things other than the ones they want or expect him to have, and they’re treating it like some sort of contest.