A review by jwinchell
My Father, the Panda Killer by Jamie Jo Hoang

5.0

There is a lot of trauma in this book—physical and emotional violence, war and gruesome deaths. Jane is a senior in high school in 1999 and she has taken care of her little brother for the last 4 years since her mom up and left. Dad is a refugee from Vietnam and has never recovered from the trauma of his experience. Jane doesn’t like anything about being Vietnamese, and she’s trying to get up the gumption to tell her brother and dad that she’s going away to college. Alternating with this storyline is Jane’s telling or their father’s departure from Vietnam in 1976 and extreme experiences as a refugee. Memory is tricky here, and that would be a theme I’d have high school students pay attention to. 10th grade and up. Add this very important YA novel to the growing genre of Vietnamese perspectives from the Vietnam War.