Masterfully crafted poetic prose — raw, blooming, explosive, dancing, wailing imagery. Thoughts becoming feelings, feelings becoming thoughts, the book almost breathes with words come intensely alive. It’s a brilliant fever dream. 

The content was difficult at times, but in that struggle between running away and committing to involvement, we better understand the narrator’s lived experience as a Vietnamese immigrant, as a product of violence and war, as a queer man, as a son who can best express his life in a language his most beloved audience doesn’t speak. Weaving language into often dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish, but always artful palpable displays may be a symbolic way to share himself with her, despite all other barriers. 

The influence of Roland Barthes and semiotics was apparent throughout — signs, symbols, syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics conducted by a maestro.