Neither Tiên nor the librarian he consults is able to find the word for “gay” in Vietnamese in English, Tiên doesn’t know how to get through to his mother when the only vernacular they share is fantasy. The timelessness of fairy tales, then, is both a comfort and a hindrance. Tiên is the first in his family in multiple ways: first to grow up in America, first to go to a school dance, first to come out as gay (as far as he knows). The familiar patterns and vocabulary of fairy tales form a comfortable middle ground for mother and son, a meeting place between cultures, between languages, and-as it sometimes seems to Tiên’s mother-between worlds. She sees her own experience reflected in these tales, too: the fear of fleeing her war-torn country, the hardship of working long hours to make a living, the joy to be found in marriage and in this new, relatively safe land. Though the tales Tiên reads are different from the ones his mother grew up with in Vietnam, his mother can see that their bones are the same. The answer, as it turns out, is fairy tales, which Tiên’s mother asks him to read to her every evening. If you can’t read the map, you’re lost.” So how can Tiên, who speaks mostly English, find his way to his mother, who speaks mostly Vietnamese? How can he come out to her when he doesn’t even have the right words? “To me,” says Tiên’s mother, “language is a map to help you figure out where you are.
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