Son Do

Son Do is a Vietnamese journalist and former college acquaintance of The unnamed narrator whose career in exile turns reporting into a way of connecting displaced people. A committed leftist and once a forceful leader of Vietnamese students opposed to the war, he later establishes the first newspaper in his native tongue among the refugees in America. His reunion with The unnamed narrator is warm on its surface but edged with uncertainty: each man has changed, and neither can be sure how much of the past remains intact.

Background and Political Formation

In 1969, the final year The unnamed narrator spent in America as a student, Son Do was studying journalism at a college in Orange County. He carried himself with the confidence of an aristocratic family background and often invoked his grandfather, a mandarin who had denounced the French so vehemently that they sent him to Tahiti. The family story held that the grandfather befriended Gauguin there before dying, perhaps of dengue fever or perhaps of homesickness. Son Do inherited the conviction behind that story, along with a reputation for being certain of his views.

His politics placed him on the left, in contrast to the more conventionally conservative force of his personality. He led the antiwar faction among Vietnamese foreign students. The unnamed narrator attended gatherings of both the antiwar and pro-war groups; despite their political differences, the parties were otherwise strikingly alike in their food, songs, jokes, and conversations. Both factions shared the loneliness of students living far from home. Son Do’s politics distinguished him, but exile also joined him to people with whom he disagreed.

Journalism and Refugee Community

Son Do stayed in America after graduation because returning to Vietnam could mean imprisonment on Poulo Condore. Before the refugee exodus brought a larger Vietnamese community to the area, he reported for an Orange County newspaper and lived in Westminster. Moved by the refugees’ circumstances, he founded the first newspaper in their native tongue. The paper was intended to connect a scattered population through news, making journalism a practical form of community-building rather than merely a profession.

The need for such a connection becomes clearer in The unnamed narrator’s account of refugee resettlement. Sponsors sent arrivals to widely separated states, while people exchanged addresses and phone numbers and relied on a refugee telegraph system to learn where jobs, benefits, familiar communities, and less racism might be found. The narrator imagines that, had they been allowed to remain together, the refugees could have formed a self-sufficient colony with a voice in Congress. Instead, bureaucratic dispersal divided them, and local gatherings in basements, churches, backyards, and beaches became ways to recover some collective life. Son Do’s newspaper answers that separation by carrying news across distance.

Reunion and Renewed Acquaintance

The unnamed narrator encounters Son Do again at a gathering of exiles, years after last seeing him in 1969. Son Do introduces himself as the editor of the new newspaper and explains that an interview with The General will appear in its first issue. The General offers him a bottle of chardonnay in appreciation of his work in reviving the press in their new country. Son Do initially resists the gift but accepts after The General insists; The unnamed narrator photographs him with The General and Madame, the bottle held between them. The image records a public alliance between the new newspaper and an exile leader whose earlier government had jailed journalists for speaking too freely.

Away from the interview, Son Do and The unnamed narrator exchange brief accounts of their lives. Son Do is glad to see his old acquaintance and suggests meeting for coffee, but the narrator privately questions the phrase old friend: his memory of Son Do is of someone less gentle and generous. In college, Son Do had been forceful and outspoken, pounding tables and denouncing opponents. The narrator wonders whether Son Do has changed or merely lowered the volume of a personality that remains essentially the same. That uncertainty is sharpened by the narrator’s own unreliable recollection: he burned his student journals before returning to Vietnam because they might reveal his private thoughts, leaving no written record against which to measure either man’s past.

Reporting, Race, and Belonging

At another gathering, Son Do is working as a reporter, not simply attending as a fellow exile. After The Anti-Communist Congressman’s speech, he stands with a notepad and pen beside Sofia Mori. Son Do recognizes the overlap between the Congressman’s slogan and language used by the Communist Party; Sofia Mori responds that a slogan is an empty suit anyone can wear. Son Do appreciates the observation and writes it down. His attention to her comment shows his reporting drawing political meaning from the language circulating among the exiles, rather than limiting itself to the speeches of prominent figures.

The conversation turns to the unequal expectations placed on Asians speaking English. Sofia Mori observes that a white man may be praised for a few words in an Asian language, while Asians risk ridicule for an accent; The unnamed narrator adds that fluent English can make Americans trust an Asian speaker and imagine him as one of their own. Son Do asks whether the narrator is that kind of person, his gaze described as opaque. The question unsettles the easy warmth of their reunion: Son Do is attentive to how fluency can help someone pass into acceptance, while the narrator recognizes that such acceptance may depend on being mistaken for belonging. Their exchange places the newspaper’s work within a wider struggle over who is heard, who is treated as foreign, and who gets to speak for the community.

Presence in the Final Manuscript

In the manuscript’s final departure passage, Son Do appears alongside The crapulent major in an uncanny image: both lie on the ceiling, frightening away geckos. When Bon asks whether the refugees have a reasonable chance of surviving the voyage, the two answer together with a mordant reflection on the certainty of death. Their shared, disembodied presence does not resolve the narrator’s earlier doubts about Son Do or restore their former friendship. Instead, it carries the journalist into the manuscript’s last reckoning with exile and mortality, where the dead remain part of the company the living take with them.