Jasmine and Du’s individual stories reflect the challenges and frustrations of immigrants in America, as they both try to determine their own identities in a foreign, alien culture. Du’s struggles typify what happens to “model minorities” who encounter benign racism: His teachers and neighbors write off his skills, accomplishments, and talent for engineering as a given—something worthy neither of surprise nor praise. At the same time, no one probes the depths of his emotional life—details about his journey to America, the traumas and tragedies he has faced, and his goals and plans for himself, all emerge as surprise revelations. Only when he leaves Bud does Du forge a life based on reclaiming his identity: He seeks out his sister, affirming his Vietnamese origins, and decides to leave school and work in a repair shop, relying on his innate talent for mechanics.

Jasmine’s search for identity is much more internally driven. Her perception of America is rooted in her upbringing in a conservative, oppressive, and patriarchal culture that enforced the idea that women only had value as wives and mothers. As Jasmine goes from name to name, she tries on a variety of ways of being a woman: a more liberated Indian wife with Prakash, an au pair in a seemingly idyllic family with the Hayeses, and a modern woman with a job at a bank and an adopted child with Bud.