Dust Child

Phong, an Amerasian man, is the titular “dust child” of the novel. He is the son of Quỳnh and a Black American soldier. Phong has experienced prejudice throughout his life in Việt Nam, not only because of his American father but also because of his dark skin color—this is why he is called “a child of dust” (330). Abandoned at an orphanage not long after his birth, Phong is initially raised by a nun named Sister Nhã. When she dies, he becomes unhoused and turns to petty crime to survive.

Phong’s identity ties him to the broader history of the war in Việt Nam. He represents an entire generation of children who were stigmatized because they were the result of taboo relationships between American soldiers and Vietnamese women. The novel highlights the troubles faced by these individuals, who experienced discrimination and exclusion from the moment they were born. These children were often abandoned by their fathers, who disavowed all paternal responsibility for them, and their mothers often gave them up because they did not have the financial means or social support to raise them.

Phong is introduced by showing how his racial identity has complicated his life. He recalls that “[t]hroughout his life, he’d been called the dust of life, bastard, Black American imperialist, child of the enemy. These labels had […] burrowed deep within him, refusing to let go” (1). Phong’s experiences of prejudice are particularly difficult because he experiences the stigma of being both Black and foreign born. In communist, postwar Việt Nam, the children of Americans were seen as enemies, and racism against dark-skinned individuals was rampant. Phong’s character represents The Costs of War for the Vietnamese, and through his depiction, the novel draws attention to a group of “survivors” whose stories have long been ignored because so much of the literature that has been produced about the Việt Nam war in the United States has privileged the experiences of Americans.

However, Phong’s story is not solely tragic. Through him, the novel also showcases Vietnamese culture since Phong loves Vietnamese art and music. He spends his free time attending performances of traditional Vietnamese music, and it is at one such show that he meets his wife, Bình. The two bond over their shared passion. Through this, the novel paints a portrait of Việt Nam that goes beyond images of war and tragedy: Dust Child does illustrate the horrors of war, but it also shows that Việt Nam is a beautiful, complex country brimming with culture and life.

Like Trang, Phong is deeply committed to family. He desperately wants to find his parents, but he is also devoted to his wife and children. In part because he never had a father of his own, he strives to be the best possible father to his son and daughter. He wants his children to have access to education and healthcare, and he works hard in order to guarantee their comfort. When he discovers that Quỳnh is his mother and finally meets her, he is resentful at first since he cannot fathom how she could abandon him when he was just a baby. However, with time, he is able to forgive her, and the bond that he and his family forge with Quỳnh speaks to the importance he places on familial relationships.

Dan is an American veteran of the war in Việt Nam. He has PTSD as a result of his experiences during the conflict. The war continues to haunt him, but he is also shown to be selfish and racist, and he is in denial about the damage that he did to Việt Nam and its people during his time as a soldier. Through the character of Dan, the novel demonstrates that although the war certainly did leave American soldiers with lasting emotional damage, the war’s impact on the people of Việt Nam was much worse and far greater. Dan is a complex character who is neither fully sympathetic nor a true antagonist. Rather, he represents the idea that American involvement in the war was itself unjust and was shaped by both racism and imperialism.

Through Dan’s own memories and reminiscences, the novel explores the way that the war continues to shape Dan’s life even decades after its conclusion. He recalls nightmares so terrible that he wakes up choking his wife. He spent years in support groups, read as many books as he could find about the war in order to understand it, and abused alcohol and eventually struggled to sobriety. After he returned to the United States after the war, he had the opportunity to pursue a lucrative career as a pilot; however, he was a helicopter pilot in Việt Nam and associated flying with traumatic wartime experiences. So, he became an electrician instead.

Dan is a dynamic character since he is on a journey of self-discovery and is determined to improve himself. As part of his educational project about Việt Nam, he read a famous book called The Sorrow of War by a North Vietnamese soldier, and he realized that the people he’d fought against were complex human beings just like him; he then comes to question the racist beliefs of the Americans who had viewed the Vietnamese as subhuman. He also realizes “how naïve he’d been about the war” (69). This moment marks the beginning of Dan’s awakening, and it allows the novel to explore the unjust involvement of Americans in the war in Việt Nam through the perspective of a veteran of the war.

Dan also realizes that he internalized his superior officers’ racist assertions about the Vietnamese people and that he transferred that attitude to his relationship with “Kim”/Trang. He comes to understand that he horribly mistreated her. He wants to atone for this, so he forges a relationship with Phong and his family, helping them financially and becoming a sort of extended family. Thus, Dan grapples with and then accepts his own guilt during the war. In this way, his character represents the novel’s assertion that the United States is responsible for the damage that it did to Vietnam and its people. This message is strengthened because it comes from Dan himself. He accepts blame, and in so doing, his character makes the broader argument that the United States must atone for the role that it played in the war.