num_pages: 160
description: The highly acclaimed novel that reveals the life of a Vietnamese family in America through the knowing eyes of a child finding her place and voice in a new country.“A brilliant evocation of human sorrow and desire.... Heartbreaking and exhilarating.” — The New York Times Book ReviewIn 1978 six refugees—a girl, her father, and four “uncles”—are pulled from the sea to begin a new life in San Diego. In the child’s imagination, the world is transmuted into an unearthly realm: she sees everything intensely, hears the distress calls of inanimate objects, and waits for her mother to join her. But life loses none of its strangeness when the family is reunited. As the girl grows, her matter-of-fact innocence eddies increasingly around opaque and ghostly traumas: the cataclysm that engulfed her homeland, the memory of a brother who drowned and, most inescapable, her father’s hopeless rage.
language: English
title: The Gangster We Are All Looking For
titlecomplete: The Gangster We Are All Looking For
genres: Asian Literature, Historical, Asia, Novels, School, Historical Fiction, Literature, Coming Of Age, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 2784
places: California, Vietnam, San Diego, California
awards: awardedAt: 1293868800000
name: One Book One San Diego
publisher: Anchor Books