Lucky Ticket by Joey Bui
Ranging from Melbourne to the Mekong, the stories in this debut collection by Vietnamese-Australian author Joey Bui explore migration, race and class privilege, poverty, dislocation, and loneliness. Based on interviews she conducted with migrants from around the world, they offer glimpses into both ordinary and extraordinary lives: here, the extremes of war and trauma bump up against the pressures of everyday racism and family expectations.
Luck and chance play a significant role in the lives of these characters whose “fortunes rise and fall.” In “Abu Dhabi Gently,” a Zanzibari worker gets a job opportunity in the United Arab Emirates, leaving his family and new fiancée behind for the promise of success. However, this “lucky ticket” soon becomes a cruel period of isolation: his passport is seized due to an administration error, and he spends a lonely year in the desert city becoming increasingly depressed and disillusioned.
Bui captures the distinctive details of her character’s lives well, and their diverse voices animate the stories. “Hey, Brother” is written in the second person, with the narrator reciting the story of his life to both the reader and an unknown (perhaps sinister) listener. “Mekong Love” has a familiar, fable-like quality, featuring an arranged marriage with hints of a horror revenge tale.
These stories are also very contemporary and cleverly expose how race and class privilege play out in small and large ways. In “Before The Lights Go Out,” a white curator convinces a Nepali student to include a photograph of his friend’s grieving mother in her exhibition about the civil war. In “Whitewashed,” Vi’s white friend Michaela praises her for her “authenticity” and tells her, “I think I’d like growing up poor.”
Bui ultimately doesn’t shy away from the gritty or grotesque aspects of a life lived in the margins, and there is a sense of unease that runs throughout the collection. There are many characters, particularly women, who have endured cruelty and trauma to become strangers to themselves. Tensions often run high between migrant parents and their second-generation children. Most of the stories end on a moment of ambiguity or reflection for the characters. In those which rely heavily on plot, this shift to interiority means the stories can feel slightly incomplete. However, it also reflects the fact that for many migrants living unpredictable and precarious lives, there are no easy conclusions.
Comparisons have been made between Lucky Ticket and Nam Le’s landmark short story collection “The Boat,” which also focuses on the experiences of migrants around the world (one of Bui’s stories is even dedicated to Le, a thematic inversion of his powerful piece “Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice.”) With a similar empathetic eye and ambitious range, Bui is definitely a young writer to watch.