MY FATHER, THE PANDA KILLER

A Vietnamese father and daughter wrestle with intergenerational trauma in San Jose.

It’s the summer of 1999, and 17-year-old Jane Vũ is resentful: Her mom left three years ago, and Jane wakes up before dawn to open her family’s convenience store, where she has worked the register since age 11. Jane and Paul, the 7-year-old brother she’s taken care of since he was a baby, are routinely beaten by their abusive father, Phúc. Despite all this, she got into UCLA, her ticket to a better life. But now Jane is struggling to tell Paul she’ll be leaving. Before she goes, she has a story to tell him, one that follows a 13-year-old Phúc in 1975 as he attempts to escape Vietnam during the war. Leaving his hometown of Đà Nẵng, Phúc encounters pirates, sharks, and other horrors on his way to the United States. The two narratives alternate, offering parallels between the harsh realities faced by a war refugee and his daughter. A sharp, introspective lead, Jane works to reconcile her father’s love with his cruelty and is bitingly candid on the subjects of Vietnamese stereotypes, culture, and people—including her parents. The painfully raw depictions of Phúc’s brutality are arduous to read, but even so, Hoang successfully makes the case for offering empathy over judgment.

A gripping and difficult story of a family surviving abuse.