Appendix E: Teacher Resources
Saigon Passage
What do the diction, imagery, details, syntax, and figurative language reveal about Andrew Pham’s attitude (tone) about Saigon.
The Saigon I see isn’t visceral. I’d be deceiving you if I took your hand to walk you through it. It isn’t just something you see. It’s what you feel, an echo in the blood that courses through you. It is a collage, a vanishing flavor, a poison, a metallic tinge, a barbarous joy, strange impressions unconvictable in the usual conventions.
It is easy for me to say because I am cowering in a bar, exclusive, situated high above the muck. Easy, for today I was wounded, my armor finally pierced. Now, through this tinted window, I see a Saigon evening like the dozens of others before. I see the setting sun grinding down on the ancient tree tops and the prickly antennas atop the shouldering buildings. It glowers, a fist of coal in a sea of smog thick as dishwater. In the glimmering heat, the narrow roads swarm with headlights of motorbikes, bright beams wildly fingering the asphalt arteries, companions of the horns, the screeching, badgering, warring horns, persistent always. The air throbs, salty, wet with exhaust, dank with perspiration. The people, the skinny dark people suffocate, enduring.
Kiosks hedge the street, no sidewalks, catching the drift of humanity churned up by traffic. The sandwich makers, old ladies with oily hands, dusty skin like yesterday’s bread, lather pork fat onto tiny loaves. On the curbs, the shirtless men sun-jerked sinew in boxer shorts and rubber sandals, squatting on their hams, grill meat over coals in metal pans. A dog, patchy fur over ribs, sniffs the droppings of another. In an alley, a mother and daughter fry dough cakes, selling them wrapped in dirty newspapers. Next to them, laborers hunch on plastic footstools slurping noodle soup from chipped bowls. They are watching an American travelogue dubbed in Vietnamese. Tonight, we tour Yosemite and luxuriate in the hospitality of the Ahwahnee Hotel.
People shout, curse, barter, laugh, whine, edging words into the traffic, hustling for money. The buildings press narrow, ten feet wide, and stretch thrice as long, every other one a storefront, open for business, selling, selling, selling anything, everything. Food, paper, spare screwdrivers, wrenches, rice dishes, Coca-Cola, cigarettes, gasoline in soda bottles, penny-lottery tickets, imported tins of biscuits, and everything has a buyer, everyone is for sale.
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