“All his life in Vietnam my father had been a farmer. Here our apartment house had no yard. But in the lot he would see me. He would watch my beans break ground and spread, and would notice with pleasure their pods growing plump. He would see my patience and my hard work. I would show him that I could raise plants as he had. I would show him that I was his daughter.”

The act of planting symbolically connects Kim to her deceased father and acts as foreshadowing. The imagery of the long, trailing bean vines emerging from a small seed parallels the way in which Kim’s small act of planting eventually “sprouts,” transforming the neighborhood.

“This has always been a working-class neighborhood. It’s like a cheap hotel—you stay until you’ve got enough money to leave.”

Ana’s observation of the neighborhood’s transience helps illustrate why Overcoming Separation With a Shared Purpose is a particular challenge for this community. A neighborhood in which people arrive and leave quickly poses obstacles to making lasting connections and identifying common goals and aspirations.

“I hacked and dug but didn’t find anything except for a large white bean. I tried a new spot and found another, than a third. Then the truth of it slapped me full in the face. I said to myself, ‘What have you done?’ Two beans had roots. I knew I’d done them harm. I felt like I’d read through her secret diary and had ripped out a page without meaning to. I laid those beans right back in the ground as gently as sleeping babies. Then I patted the soil as smooth as could be.”

The simile likening the beans to “sleeping babies” and the passage’s gentle parental imagery develop the theme of Nurturing as an Act of Faith and Healing. Caring for the beans helps Ana resolve her inner conflicts of loneliness and separation from family.