Vietnamese for “chessboard,” a neighborhood of Sài Gòn where Thi and her family live before migrating to the United States. Known for its “maze of alleys and passageways” inhabited by poor immigrants from other parts of Việt Nam, Bàn Cờ reminds Thi of New York’s Lower East Side.
Bàn Cờ Quotes in The Best We Could Do
The The Best We Could Do quotes below are all either spoken by Bàn Cờ or refer to Bàn Cờ. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
I still have the chessboard my father made when I was a kid, and the wooden set of pieces we played with.
the CHARIOT
the ELEPHANT
the GENERAL
the COUNSELOR
the SOLDIERS
Revisiting this game of war and strategy, I think about how none of the Vietnamese people in that video have a name or a voice.
My grandparents, my parents, my sisters, and me—
—we weren’t any of the pieces on the chessboard.
We were more like ants, scrambling out of the way of giants, getting just far enough from danger to resume the business of living
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Bàn Cờ Term Timeline in The Best We Could Do
The timeline below shows where the term Bàn Cờ appears in The Best We Could Do. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6: The Chessboard
...this with research—Bố gives her an old American documentary with video of their neighborhood, “ Bàn Cờ , or the CHESSBOARD…” so called “because of the maze of alleys and passageways.” Thi...
(full context)
Bố grows up like this in the tiny Bàn Cờ house, but also goes to one of the city’s fanciest private schools. He dresses “like...
(full context)
