Themes and message

Consequences of economic recession

The story “Only You Farang Are So Easy to Come and Leave” by Mai Nardone is set during the 1997 Southeast Asian financial crisis and follows how the crisis affected people in Thailand. The family in the story needs  to move to a smaller house and the husband loses his job. As the wife does not work, this eventually puts pressure on the family to survive. For them to survive, the only solution they find is for the husband – who is American – to go back to his country and work there. In other words, separation is necessary for the economic stability of the family. Working in the US allows the husband to support his daughter’s expensive education and his wife in Thailand.

Much of the story looks at how the daughter Lara perceives the impact of the crisis. The girl becomes aware of it at school, as the father of another student commits suicide and the student needs to retire from the international school. She then becomes aware of the crisis by seeing abandoned construction sites. Finally, she sees how the crisis affects her father who is left without an occupation.

However, when the father decides to leave for the US, Lara does not want to think that the recession is the cause of his departure and prefers to blame it on her mother. After the father leaves, she starts blaming all fathers who could not cope with the crisis: “It was a father conspiracy. They all had a plan B. You could trace their exploits if you wanted to; in their wake they left home-shaped shells...