Will I ever get to enjoy a normal romance in this class?

Ah… Professor, is there one book in here that will begin and end with the same healthy romantic relationship? I’m so horrified by this romantic dynamic and even though I’ve visited this book during my highschool days, it still disgusts me to read some of these pages here (like pages 37-39). There were some questions in my head as I was reading through, like… was it necessary to have this sort of age difference at play? Did she have to be a minor to get the theme of racial and colonial power across to the readers? In my mind, I honestly thought the same messages could be explored without having the shock value of pedophilia. Hypothetically, if it were necessary, then what might her age have done to amplify the story? Some ideas that come to mind:

1. The illusion of power in the relationship.
   Despite her being younger, the girl seems to have emotional power over him (“He’s trembling.” p. 36) but realistically, she has no control over the relationship. Her detachment provides a sense of control, but isn’t it actually disassociation? She asks questions to him and depending on his answers, lets him do things to her based on his own ideals. If she was an adult, this could be seen differently. Rather than a child struggling to hold the reigns of her life through this romantic endeavor, it can be seen as a normal relationship divided by race. Maybe as an adult it would’ve even be a relationship driven by financial gain.
2. Reveals the impact of trauma through time.
   I think I’m starting to sense an overarching theme of memories in the class’s set of literature, because memory is so important in this novel. It is almost as if the author is trying to unravel and make sense of her childhood; to put the lover to rest. The fact that her initial sexual and romantic encounter as a child was complicated and muddled with power dynamics she herself did not understand makes it deeply unsettling as the character grows up and looks back at these memories through her narration.

   This duo implants trauma not through an abusive relationship, as some of our other books do, but because she was unknowingly taken advantage of. I say unknowingly because I don’t believe a minor could ever truly have a right to choose whether or not to be in a relationship with an older person. It is purely up to the older person to push away the younger one in these situations. It is even more so that she was taken advantage of because of her familial situation. She wanted an escape and with all of these circumstances, she was driven to choose him instead of being left alone with her family. If this affair occured when she was of age, the relationship itself would not be the reason for trauma, rather, it could have been the heartbreak of racial marginalization.

One last thing I wanted to talk about was the author’s periodic depersonalization (this I found interesting). The narration begins with her referring to herself as I, though as we get closer and closer to the memories of her in Saigon, “I” turns into ‘the girl’:

• “It’s not the shoes, though, that make the girl look so strangely, so weirdly dressed,” (p. 12).
• “The girl in the felt hat is in the muddy light of the river” (p. 20).
• “And the girl started up as if to go and kill herself in her turn” (p. 114)

I thought this was an amazing way to change a novel’s pronouns/POV to show the inner detachment the author has of herself even as she remembers these memories as an adult. I took these breaks to be a point that signified how she wasn’t truly present in that moment. Or how she felt outside of her own skin, not alive, not real.