Previous
Chapter 8
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Counting by 7s, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Independent Thinking
Bureaucracy
Grief and Survival
Chosen Family
Summary
Analysis
Nguyen Thi Mai is a 14-year-old freshman at Condon High School, on the other side of Bakersfield, the town where Willow lives. Her brother, Nguyen Quang-ha, is a year older and often gets in trouble, but Mai never does. Mai believes that she is always confident because she was born in the year of the dragon. Mai’s grandfather was a Black American soldier, making her mother an outcast in Vietnam. Her mother’s name was Dung, but she changed it to Pattie after moving to the United States. In the United States, Pattie had Mai and Quang-ha with a Mexican man who left one day and never came back.
Mai seems to be a slightly older version of Willow who also sometimes struggles to fit in but who has more self-confidence to assert herself. Mai’s mix of different backgrounds emphasizes how the modern United States is full of people with connections to other countries all over the world. Pattie’s experience of changing her name when she came to the United States is similar to Dell’s family changing their Greek last name during immigration. This passage shows how, as much as the United States accepts people from around the world, it also sometimes forces them to change to fit in.
Active
Themes
Quang-ha is one of Dell’s cases, and Dell has Quang-ha work on a coloring book. In the meantime, Dell leaves the school and comes back with a cat in a pet carrier. When he gets back, Willow and Mai are waiting outside his office and Quang-ha doesn’t want to stop coloring. Mai threatens to report Dell for leaving the school and being late to Willow’s meeting.
Active
Themes
