Identity
English Department
Year 9 Identity Unit
In-depth Study of The Happiest Refugee
Book Two
Contents / PagePrologue / 4
Chapter One / 6
Chapter Two / 7
Chapter Three / 7
Chapter Four / 8
Chapter Five and Six / 9
Chapter Seven / 9
Chapter Eight / 11
Chapter Nine / 11
The Happiest Refugee (2010)
Prologue
1. “I’m flying down the Hume Highway at 130 kilometers an hour. I’ve lost control a few times but the brrrrrr of those white guide things on the side of the road keep me on track. A steering wheel wet from tears is a very slippery object,” so begins Anh Do’s memoir.
a. What tense is this passage? (Past, present, or future?)
b. What is the narrative voice? (First person, second person, third person, third person limited?)
2. How old do you think Anh is during this recollection?
3. Anh places us, his readers, in a privileged position, a god-like or omniscient position. We watch the events and can also hear Anh’s inner thoughts, like asides in a Shakespearean play. The first one is “Will he even recognise me?” How does this technique make Anh’s writing intriguing for his audience?
4. Why do you think he choose this incident to start his memoir?
5. What revelation does Anh have at the end of the Prologue? How does this make us want to read more?
Enrichment QuestionsBear Grylls starts his memoir, Mud, Sweat and Tears (2011), with the lines:
“The air temperature is minus twenty degrees. I wiggle my fingers but they’re still freezing cold. Old frostnip injuries never let you forget. I blame Everest for that.”
Alan Alda begins his first autobiography, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed (2007), with the sentence:
“My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.”
6. How many similarities between the three excerpts can you find? Outline them.
7. Which beginning do you find most interesting? Why?
8. Why do you think these authors have started their reflections in this manner?
9. What categories of events do you expect to find in an autobiography?
10. Life is chaotic. Full of multiple over-lapping stories occurring simultaneously. How does writing about singular events help memoir writers, and us, reflect upon the events of our lives?
11. Enrichment Question
Pen three ideas about how to start your memoir. Focus on which idea you could make most interesting for readers. Without wanting to be flippant, this might have been an event which you found traumatic.
Imagine that your reflections are to be published in weekly installments in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Spectrum section of their weekend edition. While thinking about your audience (educated readers, friends, critics, judgmental school teachers) write the Prologue of your memoirs. Your editor would like a minimum of 200 words.
Chapter One: After the Fall
12. Anh starts Chapter One with the passage:
“Downtown Saigon is a tangle of bikes, pedestrians and rickshaws. The year is 1976 and the Vietnam War has just ended. A crowd of people wait at the end of Phu Street, where the train tracks curve sharply around a bend.”
a. What tense is this passage? (Past, present, or future?)
b. What is the narrative voice? (First person, second person, third person, third person limited?)
13. Was Anh there? Does it matter?
14. Does this method of storytelling engage you? Explain your response.
15. Enrichment QuestionHow did your parents meet? Using the same style as Anh, reconstruct their first meeting. You may need to ask them. (~ 200 words)
Historical Research Questions
16. Name Vietnam on the map provided. Can you name the three countries it shares a land boarder with too?
17. Before the Americans arrived, which European country ruled Vietnam from 1857 until 1954?
18. What were the official years of the Vietnam War in which the Americans were involved?
19. Vietnam was divided into two parts by an international treaty in the mid-1950s into North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
a. What was the capital of North Vietnam?
b. What was the capital of South Vietnam? What is the city’s current name?
c. Which side helped the American and Australian soldiers?
20. When the Americans evacuated at the end of the war, what happened to many South Vietnamese people who helped the Americans?
21. If you have not done so already, highlight where Cambodia is on the map.
22. In the same year the US hastily withdrew from Vietnam, what did Pol Pot do in neighboring Cambodia?
23. Approximately how many people were massacred by Pol Pot’s regime?
24. From page 1, outline three aspects that highlight the desperate situation in South Vietnam in 1976.
25. From pages 4 and 5, write a summary of Anh’s Uncle Thanh’s experiences. (50 words)
26. Enrichment QuestionWrite a diary entry from the doctor’s viewpoint about Uncle Thanh’s experience. Describe your reasoning, equipment, conditions in which you have to work, views on the ‘re-education’ (concentration) camp. (~200 words)
Incidentally, there is a fascinating diary that was written by a young, female Vietnamese doctor from the North. She was killed in 1970. Her diary was found in her backpack. Her name: Dang Thuy Tram. Her diary: Last Night I Dreamed of Peace (published in English in 2007).
27. From pages 5 and 6, why do you think Anh’s Uncle Huy became a Jesuit priest when he eventually came to Sydney?
28. After reading page 6, explain the Vietnam custom of giving numbers to children for nicknames?
29. From page 8, how did Anh’s father rescue his wife’s brothers? What qualities did he demonstrate?
30. Enrichment QuestionOutline an instance when you needed to break the rules because they were unjust? Explain the circumstances. (~ 200 words)
Chapter Two: Escape
31. Describe the boat aboard which Anh and his family escaped. (Page 9)
32. Between pages 12 and 17, describe two trials that the escapees overcame.
33. Attacked by two groups of privates, outline three horrific events the escapees endured. (Pages 20 and 24)
34. How were they saved? (Pages 25-26)
35. Enrichment QuestionWhat was the most terrifying event of your early life? (~ 200 words)
Chapter Three: Australia
36. In Chapter Three, after the traumatic events of coming to Australia, the great humour of Anh enters his reminiscences. List one humorous line in the first two pages of Chapter Three.
37. How does this change in tone keep the audience interested in his memoirs?
38. Anh mentions a phrase his parents often spoke when they arrived in Australia. What was it? (Pages 28 – 31)
39. What are three reasons for them to have said it?
40. Enrichment QuestionImagine you are writing your journal not only for current readers, but also for future generations. With the use of examples, what are three great things about Australia? (~ 200 words)
41. How did Miss Buk (Miss Burke) profoundly help Anh’s family? Was it difficult for her to help them? What effort did her actions have on the Do family? (Page 31)
42. Do you know a lady like Miss Buk? Why is kindness, giving and receiving it, important in life?
43. Enrichment QuestionStudents in younger year levels look up to you. Outline one instance in which you took the time to help someone less powerful than you either at school or in the community. (~ 200 words)
44. What were two pieces of wisdom Anh learnt from his parents? (Page 33)
45. Sammy’s an interesting character. What was the shocking insight Anh had into his life? Why do you think Sammy bullied others? (Pages 33-34)
46. In Asian cultures, family is very important. What shocked Anh’s mother about Miss Buks’ children? (Page 35)
47. Anh’s Dad said, “Always question fear… there’s almost never a good reason to be scared.” What does he mean by ‘questioning’ fear? How could his relate to your life? Maybe in regard to fearing an English exam or an end-of-year camp. Explain. (Page 39)
48. What is empathy? (Page 45)
49. On page 47, Anh fumbles his way through his speech to be School Captain of his primary school. One girl calls out, “C’mon, Ahn,” and it gives him the push to continue. How have you helped another person in a similar way? How has another person helped you in a similar manner?
Chapter Four: The Farm
50. Anh’s father had a saying, “There’s only two times in life, there’s now and there’s too late.” Do your parents have any sayings that are memorable? If not, start a family tradition and make one up. (Page 53)
51. Enrichment QuestionAnimals often play important roles in our life. Since their life spans are less than ours, we suffer their decline and loss. On page 56, Anh’s father has to put down Blackie. Write a journal entry about the passing of a pet that meant a great deal to you. (~ 200 words)
52. Anh’s father allows them to have a budgie cage, yet they lads have to make it themselves. This is called experiential learning, or learning by doing. How do you learn? (Page 58)
Chapter 5 and 6: Sacrifices
53. Enrichment QuestionAnh’s mother worked hard to send him to St Aloysius’. Think about what sacrifices have your parents made to send you to this school, to taxi you to and from weekend games. Write a first person short story from one of your parent’s perspectives about these issues of sacrifice for your benefit. You might like to consider what your parents would prefer to be doing.
Chapter 7: High School
54. Enrichment QuestionsReflecting on Yr 7 Drama, Anh comments that:
“My mind was always chattering and churning out the same thoughts: Will they see my two-toned jacket? Mum’s sick again. I don’t have the money for next week’s excursion. In drama, all of the sudden, you could stride into a battle scene wearing a helmet and vest, reciting heroic lines that save the kingdom. Instantly your worries would fade away.” (Page 77)
Based on Anh’s observations, why is imagination important? (~ 50 words)
55. In 2008, J.K.Rowlings gave the graduation speech at Harvard University. The title of her speech was “The Benefits of Failure and the Importance of the Imagination.” She said:
“One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.
There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes…
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read… Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places…
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” (Italics added)
According to J.K.Rowlings, why is imagination important? (~ 100 words)
56. Anh Do focuses on using the imaginative function of the mind as an escape from reality. J.K.Rowlings puts the emphasis on our imaginative capacity to engage with others’ realities, to “learn and understand, without having experienced.” This seems like a contradiction. What’s your view on the imagination faculty of the mind? Specifically, what function does the imagination play in your life? What function does the imagination play in your mental health? (~ 200 words)
57. Anh fondly remembers an inspirational English teacher, Mrs Borny. “One day,” Anh recalls, “she said to me, ‘Anh, you’re a very talented storyteller.’ She had no idea how far that one line of encouragement would take me.” (Page 78-79.) Small acts of kindness often have large ripples. What’s the most encouraging compliment a teacher has said to you? What’s the most encouraging comment you’ve said to a friend? Explain the circumstances surrounding both occurrences. (~ 200 words)
58. Bear Grylls wrote:
“Mum was always so generous to Lara and me growing up, and it helped me develop a very healthy attitude to money. You could never accuse my mum of being tight: she was free, fun, mad and endlessly giving everything away – always. Sometimes that last part became a bit annoying (such as if it was some belonging of ours that Mum had decided someone else would benefit more from), but more often than not we were on the receiving end of her generosity, and that was a great spirit to grow up around.
Mum’s generosity ensured that as adults we never became too attached to, or attracted by money.
I learnt from her that before you can get, you have to give, and that money is like a river – if you try to block it up and dam it (i.e. cling on to it), then, like a damned river, the water will go stagnant and stale, and your life will fester… I love the quote she gave me: ‘When supply seems to have dried up, look around you quickly for something to give away.’ It is a law of the universe: to get good things you must first give away good things. (And of course this applies to love and friendship, as well.)” Mud, Sweat and Tears page 97
Re-read pages 85 and 86 from The Happiest Refugee.
Both mothers have similar views. What ideas do they share? What are the ways in which they express these views? What effects did these views have on their respective sons? (~ 200 words)
59. Pages 86 to 88, the Kind Lions episode, is comic genius. How does Anh construct a humorous short story? How is character established? Does he know the climax he’s heading toward? Is there a twist? If so where in the story? How does the placement of the twist make the short story effective?