Sawadika American Girl
The epigraph for this young-adult book is David Pollock’s definition of a third-culture kid as “a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture.” Sawadika American Girl takes place in Bangkok in 1968 and alternates between the perspectives of two American teens who both straddle two worlds: Jack, a PFC in Vietnam, and Piper, a gifted classical pianist growing up in Bangkok as her father is part of the Vietnam War support machine. They fall in love during Jack’s week of R&R in Bangkok.
The author grew up in Thailand, and her firsthand knowledge can be felt in every detail on every page. There is a rich texturing of sights, sounds, and scents. There is a marked visual and tonal contrast between the often-suffocating world of the American diplomatic families whose children attend an international school together and are waited on by a bevy of Thai servants, and the real Thai society beyond, a world of street vendors, tuktuk drivers, bar girls, Buddhist monks, and Thai royalty. Piper and Jack’s efforts to carve an emotional space for themselves bring the conflicts between their worlds into sharp relief, but also highlight the beauty of knowing and living in more than one world. A beautiful coming-of-age story and an unputdownable read.
