A poignant coming-of-age story told in two alternating voices: a
California teenager railing against the Vietnamese culture, juxtaposed
with her father as an eleven-year-old boat person on a harrowing and
traumatic refugee journey from Vietnam to the United States.
San Jose, 1999. Jane knows her Vietnamese dad can't control his
temper. Lost in a stupid daydream, she forgot to pick up her
seven-year-old brother, Paul, from school. Inside their home, she hands
her dad the stick he hits her with. This is how it's always been. She
deserves this. Not because she forgot to pick up Paul, but because at
the end of the summer she's going to leave him when she goes away to
college. As Paul retreats inward, Jane realizes she must explain where
their dad's anger comes from. The problem is, she doesn't quite
understand it herself.
Đà Nẵng, 1975. Phúc (pronounced /fo͞ok/, rhymes with duke) is eleven
the first time his mother walks him through a field of mines he's always
been warned never to enter. Guided by cracks of moonlight, Phúc moves
past fallen airplanes and battle debris to a refugee boat. But before
the sun even has a chance to rise, more than half the people aboard will
perish. This is only the beginning of Phúc's perilous journey across the
Pacific, which will be fraught with Thai pirates, an unrelenting ocean,
starvation, hallucination, and the unfortunate murder of a panda.
Told in the alternating voices of Jane and Phúc, My Father, the Panda
Killer is an unflinching story about war and its impact across multiple
generations, and how one American teenager forges a path toward
accepting her heritage and herself.
