What We All Long For

As with Tuyen’s camera, Carla’s bicycle functions as a recurring, personal symbol of importance. Of course, Carla earns her living on her bicycle as a courier, so it’s important for that reason. However, the bike also represents freedom for her, as it allows her to work out her feelings and anxieties while being unable to be held down by the constraints of the city. The first time we see her on her bike, for example, she becomes “light” (29) as she moves through the city, stopping for nothing, unable to be stopped by anything. Further, her bike stands in contrast to her brother’s new hobby of carjacking, suggesting the strong difference between the two of them. Her brother is enamored with cars, which often function as status symbols, whereas bikes—at least at the time of the writing of the novel, and still in many places—more often suggest a lack of status, or a rejection of North American norms. 

Tuyen initially takes up the lubaio as an art installation project—she’s intrigued by the way such signposts used to hold political messages against the government, and she’s hoping to capture the city on it. The lubaio becomes a symbol of reclamation as an art installation. However, from the novel’s perspective, it is a symbol of Tuyen’s confused heritage; she takes it up in part for cultural reasons, but it is not of her culture. More importantly, it is a kind of red herring that still symbolizes Tuyen’s drives and desires: the lubaio is introduced very early on, and as such, we expect it to be very important; however, by the midpoint of the novel, it is being used to keep her potatoes away from the mice in her apartment, completely stalled as a project.