Essay Questions

Deconstruct Sang Ly’s dream in chapter one.

Sang Ly narrates, “the steady rumble of uninvited truck tries to pry into the safety of my dream, a dream in which I am still a child prancing along the trail toward the rice fields where my family works in the Prey veng province of Cambodia’s countryside. It is a cheerful morning as I pull at my grandfather’s bony fingers, tugging him a long while he struggles to keep up.” This dream is a Regression incidence which takes Sang Ly to her childhood days. Sang Ly’s engagements with her grandfather are in her unconscious and she blissfully re-experiences them through the dream.

Explain the Postmodern technique applicable to “Lucky Fat”.

The name Lucky Fat employs dark humour: “I don’t know Luck’s real name, but I have no doubt that he pooped out of the womb both plump and happy…He’s Lucky because he has an uncanny knack for finding money lost amongst the garbage. He’s called Fat because…well, he’s fat. May say that Lucky looks just like a grinning Chinese Buddha (not the Cambodian Buddha, who is quite skinny). Lucky takes the comparison kindly, and for the past year, he has been collecting Buddha statues he finds amongst the trash.” The nickname is tremendously humorous for it is based on his appearance and fortune. It overshadows the inherent tragedies which Lucky Fat has faced and is still weathering in his life.