What Happened Between Hai and Taoyu?

    Taoyu lives as two different people. Through his external appearance he lives as a promising young diver, but in his head he lives as a misunderstood teenager. Much of his life has been putting on a show. From a young age his whole existence centered around performing well at diving and never once did it center around his personality. To everyone else he was just a young athlete ready to be molded into the next star that coaches could take credit for. Leaving him to only be appreciated as a shell of a human. He has no room to emotionally grow, which leaves it all up to his mind. 

    Though never fully addressed where the root of his internalized homophobia comes from, Taoyu definitely expresses that he feels shame in his sexuality. Towards the beginning of the text it says “before each leap, Taoyu repeated a plea. That the water would cure him of his desires” and later on it says “Taoyu knew only that what he was feeling was wrong” (110,118). He feels perverted for liking his best friend, though his feelings are completely normal. Leaving his feelings to be bottled up in his head, a perfect recipe for a false reality. His crush on Hai as a person turns into a crush on the version of him in his head. He ends up feeling a much deeper emotional connection to Hai, than his best friend is able to to provide. 

    Neither Taoyu nor Hai is the villain in this story. Maybe there were some points where Hai could have responded better to Taoyu, especially when he found out his mother had died, but he simply had a different view of their relationship. Since Taoyu lived in head and Hai could not pick up on social cues at all, their relationship was never going to work, of course unless something changed. Taoyu cannot communicate through his words how he really feels about Hai and he depressingly watches him slip away. Hai on the other hand is unknowingly incapable of being what Taoyu needs. Taoyu cannot help being raised in an environment where he feels ashamed to express his sexuality and Hai cannot help being who he is. A sad, but realistic perspective of their relationship is just that circumstances kept them apart.

    Their relationship as a whole is a mixture of unrequited love and bad timing. We will never know if Hai ever had feelings for Taoyu so it is hard to label this as unrequited love, but there were definitely one-sided feelings involved. Circumstances were not on there side, but honestly this is not surprising considering it was a queer love story. Heterosexual love stories do not face the added layer of homophobia. Since we know the most about Taoyu, it is clear to see that he was not comfortable with himself or his identity. He appeared to grow up under the belief that he was sexually immoral for liking boys. All of these aspects culminate in a sad story of failed relationship. 

Grief and Memory

 The Significance of Grief

Q: What is the significance of memory in this story of grief?

In Viet Thanh Nguyen’s “Black Eyed Women” a major and consistent theme is grief. The narrator herself is a ghostwriter for other tragedies. Her job is to listen to the memories from survivors and turn them into books, all while hiding her name from the public. Victor Devoto, a client of the narrator, is the first example of memory and death merging together. As the narrator puts it “his body there but not much else” (2). Though Victor survived the crash which took his family, his mind is still stuck there. You would hope he could find happiness in the memory of his late family, but his grief consumes him only leaving him stuck with his final memory with them. A sad, but common place where grief and memory coexist. I believe Viet Thanh Nguyen connects grief and memory through other examples like this. The main death’s in this story are abrupt and unexpected, the family did not have time to prepare, therefore their memories of their loved ones get stuck and only focus on the day of their death rather than the life they had before. 

The narrator sees the ghost of her brother the same way she remembers the day he died, though it is clear there is a difference in the pain he is experiencing. As described on the 7th page, she sees him bloated, pale, wearing the same clothes he passed in, though at this point his body shows the effects of time. His brother's ghostly body still exudes the smell of the sea where he was left and the smell of the boat where his life ended. The narrator and the ghost of her brother have not confronted one another since the day he died, which illustrates why he appears to have stayed the same. Her vision of him is consumed by the way she last saw him. 

Evidence of this theme is even more heavily placed on her brother’s transformation. There is a change in him when there is a shift in their relationship. I personally view it as acceptance of his death, which the narrator was unable to accomplish before. The change begins small with her replacing his clothes. The narrator is particularly stuck on the question of how he died and she lived, a form of survivor’s guilt. That question fogs her brain and has kept her in a cycle of unrest. Her brother’s final visit is what frees them both. He can move on as he is no longer stuck in the memory of his death and the narrator can accept her brother’s and regain the connection they once had. It is his final answer which seals this freedom, “You died too, you just don’t know it.” (17). The narrator finally has the answer to work through her grief and finally accept what happened to her family. 

Grief is a difficult thing to deal with and I really like how Viet Thanh Nguyen approaches it. He is able to so eloquently describe the different stages of grief, specifically acceptance. Acceptance is not equal to being okay with death, but instead from this story we can gather that acceptance is the ability to move forward. The narrator will never be okay with her brother’s death, but she has now accepted the change in her life allowing her to move on.