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Mrs. Hoa
The father of the boy who narrates “War Years.” He had fled Vietnam with the boy’s mother and the boy after the Communists had seized his auto parts store. He now owns a grocery store, the New Saigon Market, with his wife in San Jose, California. Like his wife, the boy’s father sees the value in maintaining the boy’s Vietnamese culture, though he does not work to maintain it as strictly as the boy’s mother does.
The boy’s father Quotes in The Refugees
The The Refugees quotes below are all either spoken by The boy’s father or refer to The boy’s father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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War Years Quotes
“And what about bologna?”
“What?” My mother’s brow furrowed. “If I can’t pronounce it, my customers won’t buy it.”
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Explanation and Analysis:
In “War Years,” the narrator is a young boy whose parents escaped from Vietnam when he was only a small child, and who now live in San Jose, California and own a Vietnamese grocery store. One of the main conflicts in the story occurs between the young boy, who is growing up surrounded by American culture, and his parents, who are still deeply immersed in Vietnamese culture and who object to their son’s changing values. In this quote that tension is made concrete. The boy asks why they can’t sell bologna (and TV dinners) in the store, two quintessentially American Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur
“Go buy,” she said in English, motioning me inside. Whenever she spoke in English, her voice took on a higher pitch, as if instead of coming from inside her, the language was outside, squeezing her by the throat.
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At the end “War Years,” after the boy and his mother visit Mrs. Hoa and the boy’s mother gives her money, the mother makes another symbolic gesture. When they drive home, the boy’s mother gives him a five dollar bill and takes him to a 7-Eleven, before telling him, in English, to buy what he wants. This is a symbolic gesture for several reasons: first, the boy explains that he had once asked for an allowance—no doubt because many of his American classmates had one—and his father had told him that he had incurred $24,376 in expenses over his lifetime Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaq
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The boy’s father Character Timeline in The Refugees
The timeline below shows where the character The boy’s father appears in The Refugees. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
War Years
That night, the boy’s father tells the boy’s mother that it might be prudent to pay a little hush money....
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...mother agrees. She says, “They don’t believe in God and they don’t believe in money.” The boy’s father adds that they believe in taking other people’s money—which he had experienced when his old...
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...refuses to throw away money on a lost cause. The family finishes their accounting and the boy’s father sweeps the money into his satchel. Some of their profits go to the bank, some...
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The boy’s parents shake with fear, and the boy’s father gets down on his knees, as does the boy. But the boy’s mother does not...
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...attempt. The police had brought his mother home from a neighbor’s house. She yelled at the boy’s father , saying she saved their lives, and pulled at the boy’s ear, telling him never...
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...Mawr, and looks down in shame when she says that her daughter is studying philosophy. The boy’s father and mother think that she is wasting her education, but Mrs. Hoa says “Excellent!” and...
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...an incident years ago when she had bribed a general’s wife with gold to free the boy’s father from the draft. They hadn’t talked about it since, and would likely not talk about...
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...never given him an allowance before. When he had asked for one in fourth grade, the boy’s father had instead handed him a list of expenses he had incurred—including his birth, feeding, education,...
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