![]() ![]() ![]() When they catch enough fish for dinner they head home, Phi dreaming about the landscape of Dad’s home country. ![]() Dad nods and looks away, a clue to the unspeakable devastation of the war. “I used to fish by a pond like this one when I was a boy in Vietnam,” says Dad. Father and son also bond through stories. A nod here-when Phi lights a fire with one strike of a match a warning there-to avoid “the spicy stuff” in his bologna sandwich. And Phi asks innocently, “If you got another job, why do we still have to fish for food?” At the pond, father and son share moments of tenderness. Right from the start, he hints at his family’s dire straits: “In the kitchen the bare bulb is burning.” Readers learn they are up so early because his dad got a second job. ![]() A fishing trip is not just a fishing trip in this poignant, semiautobiographical tale.Īs a young boy growing up in a Vietnamese refugee family in Minneapolis, Phi would wake up “hours before the sun comes up” to go fishing with his dad. ![]()
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