By Audrey Fong
Reporter Tracey Lien’s debut novel, All That’s Left Unsaid, takes us back to 1996 to an Australian suburb and refugee enclave in Sydney called Cabramatta – a lower middle class city rife with crime.
The novel’s events start after the brutal murder of Denny Tran, the high-school aged younger brother of protagonist Ky Tran. While the novel does switch between several characters’ points of view, the novel largely focuses on Ky’s investigation of Denny’s death. From what Ky is told, Denny was stomped to death at a restaurant called Lucky 8 (think of your standard Asian seafood banquet halls) after a school dance. Even though there were a dozen other diners and several staff members present, everyone swears they did not see anything and provides the police with little information regarding Denny’s murder.
When Ky learns no one is willing to talk, she persuades the police department to allow her to investigate his murder, insisting that many of the witnesses are unwilling to talk because they are Vietnamese while the police department is all white, emphasizing the cultural chasm between the two groups. Besides the investigation, Ky also struggles with understanding her parents, experiences flashbacks to memories of her childhood best friend Minh Le (aka Minnie), and provides insight into the tension between Southeast Asian refugees and Australians at that time.
While All That’s Left Unsaid largely revolves around Denny’s murder and Ky’s investigation, the story is really about Ky and her best (and only) friend, Minnie. Throughout the novel, Ky imagines Minnie talking to her in a voice that sounds like a mixture of Awkwafina (bold, funny, sarcastic, and loud) and Vivian Vo from Elaine Hsieh Chou’s Disorientation (anti-colonialist, critical, and angry). Initially, I thought the inclusion of Minnie’s running commentary acted as comedic relief and as a way for Lien to criticize colonialism and the way white Australia treats refugees. But as the novel progressed, I realized that the inclusion of Minnie and her voice is critical to Ky’s development as a person and is a major reason why Ky feels motivated to stand up and investigate her brother’s murder herself. Without Minnie’s commentary egging her on, the normally soft-spoken Ky would have just trusted the system and the police department to investigate a murder that had no leads.
Growing up, Ky and her family were not well off. But, she did have present parents and enough food to eat, while Minnie did not. Minnie’s parents were physically abusive (Minnie often went to class covered in bruises and welts) and barely provided for her. Knowing this, Ky’s parents insisted that Minnie come stay at their home after school – to provide her with a family environment and food. Because of this, Ky, Denny, and Minnie grew up extremely close and, in some ways, the Tran family viewed Minnie as family. Juxtaposing the two girls and their families is one way in which Lien illustrates multiple refugee experiences and explains the supposed, mythic difference between “good” and “bad” refugees. “Good” refugees like the Trans support themselves and hold jobs. “Bad” refugees like the Les beat their children and live in poverty. “Good” refugees like Ky grow up to be journalists. “Bad” refugees like Minnie grow up to be gang members and addicted to drugs.
Even though the two girls come from fairly dissimilar family backgrounds, we learn that it’s their shared experience as daughters of refugees that unites them. In an environment in which white girls constantly bullied them, Ky “appreciated how normal her friend made her feel. When Ky later recounted stories of her parents to her white friends in college, they made no attempts to reassure her that her family was like every other refugee family, that their values and actions were typical of immigrants from Vietnam.” Instead, her white friends would make critical remarks about her family.
While my family are not refugees, I do relate to this experience sharing familial anecdotes or complaining about something with your non-Asian friends, only to have them react in an unexpected way that leaves you feeling awful such as the time my Vietnamese friend and I were joking about our mothers calling us fat and our white friends reacted angrily, saying our parents were abusive. Moments like these may not seem monumental, but they leave a lasting impression and remind me that no matter how Americanized I may appear, there are still differences between my white friends and me. It’s this feeling of otherness that unites Ky and Minnie for much of their childhood. In Minnie, Ky found “someone who understood that the act of complaining about her parents was not an invitation to troubleshoot her problems, because there was no solving the problem of refugee parents; someone who could commiserate without casting judgment.” And because of this connection, Ky grew up, relying on the bolder and more confident Minnie as her protector and as someone she could commiserate with.
The “us vs the rest of the world” mentality of their friendship is symbolic of the larger “us vs the world” attitude of Cabramatta. What I mean by that is within All That’s Left Unsaid, we see how each refugee is doing their best to protect their family and themselves even if it means possibly hurting someone else, as shown by the witnesses’ unwillingness to speak up about Denny’s death. And as Minnie points out many times (“Because those dipstick cops won’t do shit! Because they’ll write us off as troubled FOBS with FOB troubles!”) and as a school counselor explains to one witness (“When you’re in the minority, the world makes you feel like there isn’t enough room for you at the table”), it’s not like white Australia is exactly supportive of or on the side of the refugees, which exacerbates the feeling of division between the groups. Because of this, I feel that Lien’s use of Ky’s and Minnie’s friendship mirrors the “us vs them” attitude of the refugee community and that Minnie’s critical insights allows Lien to highlight issues in Cabramatta.
For someone who is more familiar with Little Saigon than Cabramatta, I appreciated the insight that Lien provided into the Vietnamese Australian community and how she did so in a gripping, fast-paced, and funny murder mystery novel. Minnie’s sarcastic commentary (and the one chapter told from the perspective of a child witness; when you read it, you’ll know) kept an otherwise heavy novel on refugees, crime, and murder from becoming too intense for the casual reader.
All That’s Left Unsaid is available from Alexander Book Company, Barnes and Noble, Eso Won Books, Garden District Book Shop, Laguna Beach Books, The Last Bookstore, and Powell’s City of Books.
Audrey Fong is a writer, interested in food, coming of age stories, and Asian American narratives. She earned her B.A. in English from UC Irvine and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. in creative writing from Chapman University. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.