Only You Farang Are So Easy to Come and Leave | Analyse

Indledning
“Only You Farang Are So Easy to Come and Leave” is a short story written by Mai Nardone, published in 2017.

It takes place in Bangkok, Thailand, where Lara attends school and lives with her Thai/Chinese mother and American father. Her father has become unemployed, and the family has moved to their old house.

Due to the unemployment, Lara’s father is moving to the U.S. to find a job, leaving Lara and her mother behind.

In a school break, Lara visits her father in the U.S. with the intention of staying there, leaving her to say goodbye to the boy she has fallen in love with, and to lie to her mother, who is still in Thailand.

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Uddrag
“Only You Farang Are So Easy to Come and Leave” is a short story written by Mai Nardone, published in 2017. The story takes place in Bangkok in 1997, where Lara and her family have just bought back their old townhouse.

Her parents’ relationship has become strained, and her father moves back to the U.S.. Later, Lara visits her father in the U.S., with the intention of not coming back to Thailand.

The story is told from Lara’s point of view. It is also told in a first-person narration, due to the narrator saying “I”, when telling the story. The narrator is restricted, and the reader only knows what Lara thinks and feels.

The two settings that the reader is introduced to are quite different. The environment where the family lives in Bangkok is old and run down, with a mud patch as a garden (p. 1, l. 4).

Buildings in the midst of construction are abandoned and graffitied, and what were to be luxurious balcony pools turned to swamps (l. 60-61).

Where the father lives is very different. He is renting a two-bedroom apartment. It has a dishwashing machine, it is insulated, and has nice furniture (l. 156).

Comparing the two settings, we see two different social environments, and as mentioned in the text Thailand has a 99% working class

(l. 28), which the U.S. does not have, so that can solidify the comparison by further showing how different the two living situations are.

Since the mother is part Chinese, part Thai, she is probably used to the working class environment, whereas the father, being American, most likely is not.