Chapter 2
The chapter opens with the narrator revising an earlier draft of a letter, confessing his path to becoming a writer and his early escape to New York libraries. He then returns to a memory of eight‑year‑old him standing over his sleeping grandmother Lan in a Hartford apartment, describing her dark skin, facial lines, and a fly on her mouth. He observes Lan’s quiet, schizophrenic mind as she asks, “You hungry, Little Dog?” and plays with a plastic WWII soldier, pressing its radio to her ear and whispering in Vietnamese that “good soldiers only win when their grandmas feed them.” The nickname “Little Dog” is explained through a Vietnamese village tradition that gives weak children despised names to protect them from evil spirits; the name becomes a shield for the narrator.
Lan prepares a modest meal of rice soaked in jasmine tea, calling it “our fast food,” and jokes with the narrator, demanding that every grain left behind “is one maggot you eat in hell.” The narrator notes Lan’s permanently bent back from trauma. A night before Independence Day, fireworks explode outside; Lan, fearing mortars, silences the narrator, pulls him to a window, and comforts him while the artillery rumbles overhead, eventually falling asleep beside the narrator’s sister Mai.
The narrator recounts his birth in a banana‑thatched hut outside Saigon, where a shaman names him “Patriotic Leader of the Nation,” a title his father proudly celebrates. He later reflects on Lan’s ambivalence to noise during a gun‑shot incident in Hartford, her calm demeanor, and a ritual of plucking grey hairs from her head while she tells spiraling war and myth stories.
On a school bus, the narrator is repeatedly assaulted and verbally abused by a boy with a yellow bowl cut, forced to answer in English while his peers jeer; he eventually complies, shouting “Kyle” under duress before the moment passes.
Later, after a shower, his mother (the narrator’s mother) sits on the couch smoking a Marlboro, chastises the narrator for crying, and urges him to use his English to become strong, promising to “find a way.” The next morning she pours him a tall glass of American milk, insisting it will make him grow like Superman; they repeat this ritual daily.
The narrator reflects on history’s spiral, noting Lan’s stories shift in minor details, reinforcing the idea of revisiting the past. He remembers a turbulent flight to California, where his mother steadies him during turbulence by comparing clouds to boulders.
He describes his limited Vietnamese vocabulary, recounts a hummingbird encounter, and the difficulty of naming things. At a closing C‑Town grocery, the family attempts to buy oxtail for bún bò huế; the narrator’s mother, unable to convey “oxtail,” performs an impromptu pantomime with French and Spanish, resulting in embarrassment and the eventual abandonment of the purchase. They instead buy Wonder Bread, mayonnaise, and three mood rings.
Back home, Lan massages the narrator’s mother’s stiff shoulders while they each wear a mood ring; Lan asks both “Am I happy?” and the narrator affirms both are happy, despite the chaotic surroundings. The chapter ends with the three of them floating on an imagined raft, drifting down an “America” river, finally feeling happiness.