The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys: Four Stories

In these accounts of Vietnamese women and their families living in the United States the usual structure of a short story is subtly reversed. The tales do not mount to a crescendo of action because the violence and physical danger in the women's lives are in the past. Dao Strom does not flashback to these events but only hints at them. For example, Sage, in the long final story is deeply devoted to her child and introspects about the nuances of her feelings for the men in her life. Her own mother was a Vietnamese prostitute who became pregnant by an American and asked him to pay for an abortion, instead of which he took her child. Some of the characters see the Americans as in some way soft and over-indulgent in meeting their emotional needs; needs that rank low in Maslow's hierarchy. The first three stories are closely interlinked and concern the same family. I found them the most intensely readable. Mary, Darcy, and American- born Christian are the three children of Su Heng, a boat person, who puzzles them by becoming apparently content with self-sufficient isolation. The third story, "Neighbors" had the most dramatic impact. A beautiful Vietnamese girl, amoral but naïve and affectionate, is victimized sexually by men and yet able to manipulate them so as to survive. Incidentally, I never figured out where the book's title came from.