Page 95 - Demo

1835 Viet Thanh NguyenLMPC/Getty ImagesPhuong claims she knows immediately why her half sister has taken the name Vivien: she has named herself after Vivien Leigh, the actress who played Scarlett O%u2019Hara, the main character of the 1939 film about the Civil War called Gone with the Wind. The film happens to be their father%u2019s favorite movie. Phuong considers the possibility that her father saw a parallel between the American South and the %u201cdefeated southern republic%u201d of Vietnam (par. 4).In what ways does this movie poster reflect Phuong%u2019s assumptions about her sister and her father? In what ways might this poster reveal the potential shortcomings of Phuong%u2019s comparison?and was seduced immediately by the glamour, beauty, and sadness of Scarlett O%u2019Hara, heroine and embodiment of a doomed South. Was it too much to suppose that the ruined Confederacy, with its tragic sense of itself, bore more than a passing similarity to her father%u2019s defeated southern republic and its resentful remnants? In Phuong%u2019s fertile imagination, Vivien%u2019s imminent return to the land of her birth was foreshadowed by Scarlett%u2019s own return to her desolate plantation.It was easy, then, in the weeks leading to Vivien%u2019s arrival, for Phuong to pass her days at 5home and at work constructing scenarios of a noble, kindly sister, somewhat solemn and sad, but nevertheless gentle and patrician, who would immediately take to her and become the mentor and guide Phuong never had. Her first glimpse of Vivien at the airport only confirmed the appropriateness of such a movie star%u2019s name for the young woman who paused at the terminal%u2019s glass gates%u2014her eyes hidden behind enormous sunglasses, her lips slightly parted in a glossy pout%u2014pushing a cart loaded with her own weight in crimson luggage. As she jumped and waved to get Vivien%u2019s attention, Phuong Copyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.