Structure

Sigh, Gone has 11 chronological chapters and a Prologue, each named after a different literary work that resonates with the thematic materials present in the chapter. Phuc often directly reflects on these books within the text. For example, in Chapter 2, he writes, “Violence lashed Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment to my childhood. The violence of Dostoevsky’s world is women throughout Crime and Punishment, stitched into the very language of the novel’s narrative” (37). This demonstrates how Phuc closely ties his experiences to the contents of these influential books.

The sequential ordering of events is also relevant to the structure of the memoir. Although Phuc organizes the thematic focus of each chapter by the books he references, he also does this by maintaining the chronological order of his life’s events. He follows his childhood from the age of four to 18. He further cements this historical catalogue by...