logo

88 pages 2 hours read

All the Broken Pieces

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Character Analysis

Matt Pin

Matt Pin, the narrator of All the Broken Pieces, is a seventh-grade boy born in Vietnam during the Vietnam War to a Vietnamese mother and an American father. When Matt was nearly 10, his mother gave her son to the American soldiers airlifting Vietnamese children out of Saigon, hoping he would find a better life in America. Matt has been adopted by a loving American family with their own young son, but he still feels torn between his Vietnamese past and his American present. At one point, a character refers to Matt as “a Vietnamese kid, / the one who reminds everyone / of the place they all want to forget” (189). Throughout the novel, Matt must work to overcome the label of “Vietnamese kid,” instead embracing both his memories of Vietnam and his present life in America to craft his own identity.

As All the Broken Pieces opens, Matt says that while he does remember Vietnam, he “remember[s] little” (3). In fact, Matt’s memories are like the “broken pieces” of the novel’s title, flashes of “fear and fog […] smoke and death” (3) that he experiences mostly in nightmares. While Matt briefly refers to his birth mother by name, he generally speaks of her as “she” and “her.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
Unlock IconUnlock all 88 pages of this Study Guide

Plus, gain access to 8,600+ more expert-written Study Guides.

Including features:

+ Mobile App
+ Printable PDF
+ Literary AI Tools