In this brief section, readers gain a little insight into the author’s past and a lot of context for the book. Although this book is a novel, it is clearly based in part on the author’s lived experience—including the traumas—of being a Vietnamese refugee in America and losing an older sibling. She mentions that she was picked up with her father by a Navy boat, just like the Girl. Her sister drowned, again like the Girl’s brother. The book’s jacket cover states that she lives in Massachusetts, so she is a writer who lives on the East Coast, like the adult version of the Girl in the book. And perhaps most importantly, the grief that lê thi diem thúy has carried over her name, which “crowded two daughters, one dead and one living” (160), becomes manifest in her refusal to state the Girl’s name. With the author's note, readers can finally understand the significance of names—or lack thereof—in the book with this piece of the author’s history. The tactic of keeping chapter titles lowercase is not just a literary device, but one rooted in the author’s own identity.