Dust Child

Content Warning: This section discusses racialized physical and verbal abuse, racism, sexual abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder, and wartime violence.

Trang is one of the novel’s three primary protagonists. She is an 18-year-old Vietnamese woman from a poor farming family. Trang and her younger sister, Quỳnh, end up traveling to the city of Sài Gòn to find jobs to help pay off their family’s sizeable debts. Although she and Quỳnh end up becoming bar girls in a club that caters to American servicemen, Trang is characterized by the importance she places on traditional Vietnamese values; her love for rural Việt Nam’s history, land, and culture; and her fierce devotion to her family.

Trang is first introduced within the context of her family, which shows how devoted she is to them. In this way, Trang is similar to the novel’s other Vietnamese characters, all of whom are embedded within strong family networks and prioritize their family members. Through this depiction, the novel counters the racist, dehumanizing narrative perpetuated by the US Army that the Vietnamese did not “value life.” Soldiers like Dan were taught this, and it informed their actions in Việt Nam. However, characters like Trang illustrate that Vietnamese people place a high value on their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.