My Father, the Panda Killer book
I picked this book up on a whim. I’ve ran out of things to read already and had to go look for another book, and this popped up in the available section of my LIbbyApp and I went, what the heck, I got nothing to lose.
This ended up being one of the most pleasant surprises I read this year. I consider it one of those books that I will heartily recommend to my friends whom I think this book would do the most good because I feel its one of the few books that gets the immigrant stories right.
The book is split into two books really, one of the stories talking about the 1st generation immigrant story. The dad escaped from war torn vietnam, came to a few stops before america and finally had his own version of the success stories. In between, he meets a girl, has a family and tries to raise his kids the best he knows how. All the while carrying scars that his culture and history really doesn’t teach him to address.
The second book is from the perspective of the daughter he raises. She is of the second generation of immigrants, forever straddling the divide of what shes’ born into in America and where her parents are from. Trying to make sense of traditions that makes no sense and she has no grounding of, and trying to fit into the weave of society in the land she was born in.
It gets worse, her mom is gone, left the family for reasons unknown. She now has to take care of herself, her brother, and the family store. Her dad is there of course, but as many 2nd generation asian girls can tell you, the dad is never of any help dealing with any emotional issues. Her brother is deathly afraid that she’s leaving too, because she IS going to college, and she’s afraid her dad is even not going to let her go, for fear of losing help for the family store.
You can’t help but root for her because she’s everything you want to see succeed. She’s tough as nails, and vulnerable as heck, and she’s every 2nd generation girl I’ve seen. Daddy issues up the wazoo. =)
Where this book really shines is that its not just a story of the travails of how tough the daughter has it, but goes through in gory details what the dad had to go through. You see why asian dads act the way they do, because a lot of it IS culture, and a lot of it IS the collective trauma all Vietnamese men had to go through to get to the US. Its not the same for other asian countries of course, but the asian culture is very similar and you can see why asian dads always act the way they do. Especially in a foreign land where they are stripped of their masculinity.
All in all, I have to say this is one of those books that I recommend to every 2nd generation daughter of asian descent. Your circumstances might not be similar, but you will certainly recognize yourself in at least some of those situations and come out with hopefully a better understanding of yourself, but also of the family that gave up so much for you to be here.
Highly recommended.