Le Thi Diem Thuy’s book “The Gangster We Are Looking for” is about the difficult fate of refugees in America. There is a certain difference between immigrants who have decided themselves to leave their country and refugees who have had to do it involuntarily. When people are tearing off their homeland it causes psychological or traumatic disorders. Le Thuy depicts leaving the homeland as trauma for the main characters.
The narrator presents all the consequences connected with this migration. Except for poor conditions and difficult obstacles, life in America is psychologically difficult for them. It is quite complicated to realize why they are forced to leave their country. They have the right to peaceful leaving in their own house in the land where they were born but the obstacles have made them leave this place. It seems that everything goes well and the mother of the narrator My works underpaid cook while her father Ba takes care of featureless green lawns (Gee, 2004). Although it seems that the whole family has coped with a new life in a new place it is psychologically difficult for them to live in new conditions. As we may observe from the book despite the efforts of the whole family to go through all these changes they are not able to bear it for a long time. Trauma is depicted as a deep wound connected with the distance from the motherland. The author does not depict this feeling as nostalgia it is depicted as a real trauma with all connected consequences.
The dignity of Ba and Ma is traumatized as far as they are professionals in their work but they are underpaid in America. They have to live for their low salary while they could afford themselves a lot in their country. Although they have been fighting for a long time finally they give in. Ba begins to drink a lot and he becomes an alcoholic making his family unhappy. He tries to find the remedy from his deep trauma in the alcohol. Parents concerned with their own feelings do not pay enough attention to their children and the children have to cope with their trauma themselves. It is more difficult for them to go through the removal and be treated as refugees in an alien country. The only healing for the narrator is to return to her native country. Even if the parents understand that the return is impossible the children imagine that return is impossible. It is complicated for them to understand their parents who seem to do nothing to return home. That is why the narrator decides to run away from the parents looking for her native house.
From the above said we may conclude that Le Thuy depicts the post-traumatic disorder in “The Gangster We Are Looking for” (The Gangster We Are Looking for, n.d.). The trauma for every member of the family is leaving their home. The understanding of the fact that they are nobody in America makes their life unbearable. Everyone copes with this trauma themselves. The author does not present real healing for her characters but the characters find the healing themselves. Ba tries to find the remedy in alcohol while the narrator decides to leave the parental house. Although it is not the solution of this problem and it does not heal their trauma really every does everything possible as it seems to them.
Works Cited
Gee, Maggie.2004. The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy. Web.
The Gangster We Are Looking For. n.d. Web. 2012.