The little ones clung to my legs and talked incessantly; they seemed to accept the word ‘aunt’ as proof enough of my trustworthiness and lovability. I found that speaking was a real effort, but one that the instant, full family life I had walked into demanded of me often. After a week of forcing myself to take part in conversations about things in which I had no interest and contribute to decisions on things about which I had no preference I realised how completely I had lost myself in Vietnam. I don’t mean that I discarded the things about myself I disliked or that I lost touch with my roots, although both of those things are true. I mean that I had become a woman without a self. For years I had spoken in sentences that weren’t. In work and food and housing I’d got not what I wanted but what I could ask for. My opinions and insights became as childish as the fragments of language I had to express them. My foreigner’s defence of smiling blandness bled into my English-speaking interactions.
What do You think about Fishing For Tigers (2012)?
