Bố’s Grandmother Character Analysis

The daughter of a village chief in a rural area near Hải Phòng, who marries Bố’s manipulative and violent grandfather at a young age. She is not actually biologically related to Bố (whose father was born before his grandparents ever met), but nobody ever makes or acts upon this distinction—for all intents and purposes, her relationship to Bố and his family is like any other grandmother’s, and indeed she plays an important part in raising him. But Bố’s grandmother also suffers repeated twists of misfortune throughout her life: her husband steals her valuable opium jars and runs away and the government expropriates her land during the Land Reforms. Then, when she moves to Sài Gòn, fighting between the South Vietnamese army and the local mafia (Bình Xuyên) destroys her remaining opium jars, the only store of wealth that allows her to live independently from her husband. Lacking money, Bố’s grandmother eventually reconciles yet again with Bố’s grandfather. Like her grandson, she gets severe tuberculosis but survives. She lives in Bàn Cờ for many years, eventually with Má, Bố, Lan, Bích, and Thi. But Bố’s grandmother falls ill just before the rest of the family flees Việt Nam for Malaysia, so they make the difficult choice to leave her behind in the care of Má’s mother and father. This tragic decision reflects the profound danger the family would have faced had they remained in Việt Nam and demonstrates the deep personal cost of their decision to leave their country behind in search of freedom.