Hang

Hang is the narrator of the story. Throughout her journey to Moscow she recounts significant events in her childhood. As she is looking back on the past, she realizes it is the steadfast resolve toward familial duty that has made her family so miserable. She realizes this does not have to be her fate. While she is waiting to leave Russia for Vietnam, she sees a group of young Japanese students who are happy and laughing and free. She longs to be Japanese, of a race that does not carry the same burdens as her people. She resolves to do what it is that makes her happy—because her duty to her mother, who would sacrifice her own daughter to help her corrupt brother—is not happiness.

Hang does not fulfill promises made to her aunt, but feels her aunt would be happy she made a choice that...