This short piece by Mike Ngo details the daily experience of an incarcerated former gangster whose family fled Viet Nam during the war. He is serving a life sentence for defending one his fellow gang members, and presumably killing a rivaling gang member. Throughout his steam of consciousness narration of one day you want to believe that he is a good man and just a product of his circumstances. Southeast Asian refuges in America were typically of low socioeconomic status even if they were successful in their homeland. Southeast Asians of the younger generation often fell into gang violence and their parents turned to drugs to deal with the extreme loss of a homeland and its toll on one’s identity.
You can tell that the prisoner feels remorse for his circumstance, but not necessarily for his crime. For example, he states, “I wonder if he (the prisoner’s father) believed that by cheating his fate-sure imprisonment for his anticommunist views-he may gave angered the gods to such a degree that fate, crawling out of the shadows of time, finds my flesh much sweeter.” As a clerk,he feels guiltily for adding to the prison sentences of his fellow inmates, but never mentions any guilt for killing another man. Why does he not feel remorse for his crime? Is it because he knows that he is product of his circumstances?
You can tell that the prisoner feels remorse for his circumstance, but not necessarily for his crime. For example, he states, “I wonder if he (the prisoner’s father) believed that by cheating his fate-sure imprisonment for his anticommunist views-he may gave angered the gods to such a degree that fate, crawling out of the shadows of time, finds my flesh much sweeter.” As a clerk,he feels guiltily for adding to the prison sentences of his fellow inmates, but never mentions any guilt for killing another man. Why does he not feel remorse for his crime? Is it because he knows that he is product of his circumstances?
Breana Inoshita
Section A02
Response #7
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