On the other hand, once she has a negative experience she wants to completely forget about it and live in the current moment in the United States. Her birth mom is more aggressive than she thought she would be and her bio family would constantly beg her for money. She wants to forget everything that happened in Vietnam, once she returns home.

Figure of Oblivion: Return

“I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him, his neck scar lit blue by the diner’s neon marquee… “Hello,” he says, without turning his head. We had decided, shortly after we met, because our friends were already dying from overdoses, to never tell each other goodbye or good night. “Hello, Trevor,” I say into the back of my wrist, keeping it in. The engine jolts, stutters up, behind me the woman coughs. I’m back inside the bus again, staring at the blue mesh seat in front of me.” 

“That time, in third grade, with the help of Mrs. Callahan, my ESL teacher, I read the first book that I loved, a children’s book called Thunder Cake, by Patricia Polacco. In the story, when a girl and her grandmother spot a storm brewing on the green horizon, instead of shuttering the windows or nailing boards on the doors, they set out to bake a cake.”

 “That time when I was five or six and, playing a prank, leapt out at you from behind the hallway door, shouting, “Boom!” You screamed, face raked and twisted, then burst into sobs, clutched your chest as you leaned against the door, gasping. I stood bewildered, my toy army helmet tilted on my head. I was an American boy parroting what I saw on TV. I didn’t know that the war was still inside you, that there was a war to begin with, that once it enters you it never leaves— but merely echoes, a sound forming the face of your own son. Boom.”

NON-PLACES

"Red worked at the plant like most of the others in town [...] by the time the chickens got to her, they were already dead, their eyes closed tight like they were sleeping. It was almost like what happened in the next room didn't happen at all." (6)

• The factory kills chickens, which is pretty lacking in humanity

• The factory is pretty isolated and nothing in her job in the factory feels real

MEMORY & OBLIVION

"They stood there together in each other's arms. It was the first time someone has ever been that close to Red, had touched her. Both women cried, but for different reasons." (13)

• Looks towards the idea of suspense within M&O -> suspension of time that cuts present off from past and future, also forgetting future and past (inversions of roles)

• Living in the moment, no so much in a positive way, but mores that there is nothing really to look forwards to outside of the potential attention of the guy in charge