The Refugees

Memory is an important theme in many of the stories in The Refugees. Compare and contrast the way memories inform the refugee experience of characters in at least three stories. What does this say about the experience of members of a diasporic/exiled community?

“Black-Eyed Women” is the only overtly supernatural tale in The Refugees. The main character is literally haunted by the ghost of her brother, but she is also figuratively haunted by her trauma from her experience as a boat person. What other characters in The Refugees are haunted in such a way? How does trauma inform their character development?

In his essay “On Being a Refugee, an American—And a Human Being,” Nguyen writes, “I came to un­der­stand that in the United States, land of the fa­bled Amer­i­can dream, it is un-Amer­i­can to be a ref­u­gee” (145). How is this realization reflected in the stories in this collection? To what extent are the refugees in this collection viewed as “un-American” by characters within the stories? How does The Refugees refute this idea?