Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Monthly Newsletter

Join Now

The Gangster We Are All Looking For

The Gangster We Are All Looking For

Author(s): Lê Thi Diem Thúy (Le Thi Diem Thuy)

Location(s): San Diego

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1970s

Location

Content

In 1978, six Vietnamese refugees were pulled from the sea just off California. In San Diego, a little girl’s matter-of-fact innocence masks the ghostly traumas that still haunt her: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland: the memory of a brother who drowned: the heartbreaking spectacle of her parents trying to make a new home, their struggle backlit by the memory of a forbidden love when they were young. thuy le has revealed a world of great beauty and enormous sorrows. The Gangster We Are All Looking For is an authentically original novel about remembering and forgetting, about home and family, and about trying to find a place – and voice – in a new world.

Review this Book

To review this book, please

Log in

Book Reviews

Lead Review

An immigrant’s experience in America, with all its confusion, loneliness, personal and familial disconnection, and loss of roots, of all that was once so familiar and normal. – Jeff Kinnear –

Read review