33 pages • 1 hour read
Lac SuI Love Yous are For White People
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Child Abuse and Domestic Violence
Physical and emotional violence mark Su’s childhood, much of it occurring inside the home. His main abuser is Pa, who speaks harshly to him from the outset of the book, setting the tone of their relationship through adolescence. The verbal abuse turns physical shortly after the family’s arrival in the US, when Pa catches his son playing with a used condom.
The abuse increases in frequency and intensity over time. Pa smacks Su across the back of the head while they are dumpster diving; he whips him with bamboo shoots and other weapons during their evening study sessions; and he puts a meat cleaver to his throat when Su comes to his mother’s defense after a particularly ugly fight. Su is also molested by his cousin Crazy over a period of eight years.
Ma is both on the giving and receiving end of the violence. She calls Su names and hits him when he fights with his sister, while Pa belittles and strikes her when she fails to meet his expectations. As for the children, they mirror their parents’ behavior: Although Su and Quy are often at odds, it is Bo who bears the brunt of her brother’s frustrations.
Pa’s abuse at the hands of his uncle contextualize his approach to fatherhood. Anxiety, loss of power, poverty, and chronic illness are also contributing factors. Su makes a conscious decision to parent differently when his wife gives birth to their daughter. He is affectionate with Sky and never raises a hand to her. That neither the children nor Ma complain to authorities about Pa’s behavior may reflect a lack of awareness of US laws regarding child abuse and domestic violence.
Traditional Gender Roles and Toxic Masculinity
Pa and Ma’s relationship conforms to traditional gender roles, with Pa as the undisputed head of the household and Ma as his subordinate. Their conventional marriage plays out in varied ways. Pa is the provider, and he supports his family as a successful business owner in Da Nang. His employment options in Los Angeles, however, are far more limited, largely because of his poor command of English. He works as a prep cook until an illness puts him on permanent disability. Pa’s failure to provide for his family’s material needs challenges his sense of identity, as well as his masculinity. It also fills him with disappointment, shame, and anger. Steeped in traditional views of masculinity, Pa finds himself at once incapable of expressing love and easily swept away by anger (an acceptable masculine emotion in the traditional gender paradigm).
Ma functions primarily in the domestic sphere, cooking, cleaning, and caring for the children. She defers to her husband in all matters, including child-rearing. For example, she forbids Su from removing his clip-on tie on the plane to Los Angeles because it is what her husband wants. Her deference to Pa is also apparent when Su questions why he can’t play with the neighborhood children: “Don’t ask why. If you really want to know, wait until your father gets home and ask him” (28). Ma does not object when Pa disparages her. He calls her an idiot after his first day at work. In addition, he blames her inferior genes for Su’s academic failures. He clearly articulates his position as the dominant partner during a violent outburst over burned rice: “Don’t think just because I’m disabled you get to do things your way!” (158).
Culture Clash
As an immigrant to the US, Su feels neither fully Vietnamese, nor fully American. Like many immigrants, he experiences conflicts between the culture of his birth country and dominant US culture. His sense of otherness, combined with a lack of affection from his father, fuels his desire to belong. He satisfies this desire by developing a defense identity, namely, by joining gangs whose members are also immigrants (the first Hispanic, the second Asian). Su struggles to reconcile his parents’ behavior and values with his experiences outside the home. Nowhere is this cultural dissonance more apparent than in Chapter 9, where Su yearns for the demonstrative parent-child relationship he sees in the media and in his Hispanic friend’s home. Su tells his father he loves him in hopes Pa will reciprocate, but the ploy fails and earns Su his father’s anger.
Su’s struggles to synthesize two cultural traditions are also apparent in his lack of fluency in Vietnamese, and in his attraction/revulsion to eating dog meat. As much as Su wants to connect to Vietnamese culture, he cannot bear the thought of eating dog when Uncle Five proposes to nhau with him in Vietnam. For many Americans, including Su, the thought of eating dog meat is abhorrent: “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to eat a dog. They are my favorite pets, like our little Chihuahua, Chen-Chen, that we raised as part of our family, play with, cuddle, and bathe” (214). Su is relieved when his father forbids Five from eating dog meat in the US. Su realizes he would eat dog to save face, but he questions whether he could keep the meat down long enough to earn his uncle’s respect.
The duality of Su’s upbringing–Vietnamese and American–is even more apparent linguistically. In Los Angeles, Su must travel to particular neighborhoods to hear people speak Vietnamese. Although he enjoys hearing his mother tongue spoken widely during his trip, the feeling is bittersweet: “Bitter because I’m no longer fluent in it, and sweet because it brings back a lot of memories and makes me feel connected to people who are just like me” (243).
