88 pages • 2 hours read
Ann E. BurgAll the Broken Pieces
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A 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.
Pages 1-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 1-42 Summary
Matt Pin, the first-person narrator of All the Broken Pieces begins by recounting a murky, mysterious scene, brimming with unrevealed information. Matt opens by telling readers his own name. He continues, revealing that “her name” is Phang My, and “his name” is one Matt will never speak, though “forever [Matt] carr[ies]” (1) this man’s blood in Matt’s own body. Matt wonders if this mysterious “he” would recognize Matt if he saw him now, if the man would “see himself in [Matt’s] eyes” (1).
Matt carries Phang My’s blood and the memory of her in his own body as well. He remembers a scene of violence, “choking mist / and wailing dust” (2), and Phang My telling him he can’t stay where he is: “Here you will be like dust” (2). Amid the whirring of “helicopter prayers” (4) and mothers “begging soldiers to take / their children” (5), Matt leaves his homeland, as Phang My urges him to “Survive” (4). Matt’s adoptive father, who is American, tells him one day that Matt could find the strange man who shared a home with Phang My, but Matt is not interested in searching for a man who “did not come back” (7).
Matt now lives in a house in America, where he hears his new parents whispering about “broken soldiers” returning to a home where people attack them with “angry words” (7). Matt has a “now brother” who doesn’t look like Matt: Matt is “too much fall,” like “wet brown leaves / under a darkening sky,” while his American brother Tommy is “summer”—“wide, grinning sky” (8). Matt also has another brother, one with dark skin, hair, and eyes, but Phang My would not let this other brother go to America with Matt. Phang My believed if the boys were separated, Matt’s brother might die: “Who would want a little boy / mangled and deformed […] with missing fingers / and stumps instead of legs?” (9). Matt tried to convince Phang My to send his brother as well, but he ended up leaving his homeland alone.
Matt goes on to describe his “now mother,” who has blonde hair and a “smell / of summer” (11) just like Tommy does. Matt’s new mother soothes him when he awakens from nightmares, singing with a voice “like warm honey,” a lullaby that acknowledges “darkness all around us” (11), but assures Matt that “now, you are home” (12). Matt’s mother promises Matt he’s safe, free from mines and guns—but if he’s safe, he wonders: “How can I / be home?” (12).
Matt’s father, with his “square and strong” (13) hands, takes Matt to the park every Saturday to toss a baseball. Matt remembers visiting the park for the first time, when he was almost 10 but smaller and younger-looking than other boys his age, and his astonishment to see “a place made / just for children” (16). He thinks that his Vietnamese brother “would like it here” (16). Matt watches his new brother Tommy on the swings at the park, and in school, when he’s asked to write a Veteran's Day essay about freedom, Matt writes: “Freedom is the color [of Tommy's] bright red sneakers” (18).
Matt says that for two years after arriving in America, he went to the adoption agency every Saturday to learn English. He and his parents learned about Vietnamese fairy tales, holidays, and games, but not about the “American War” (19). The magical Vietnam of these classes, with “colorful costumes / and carnival dragons,” is not “any / Vietnam [Matt] remembered” (21). His Vietnam, on the other hand, is a stark contrast: “only / a pocketful / of broken pieces / I carry / inside me” (23).
Now that Matt has spent two years in America, he still meets with his classmates from the adoption agency twice a year to celebrate Vietnamese holidays. Matt looks different from these other children because his face “is part American” (24). Still, at the reminder of Vietnam, his “stomach aches / with sadness,” and he “want[s] to go back” (25). Matt hears his parents talking at night, worrying about how sad he seems at the adoption agency celebration. His mother says that “maybe music will help / soothe his monsters,” while his father wants him to focus on baseball—“he has a good arm” (28).
Matt begins taking piano lessons from Jeff Harding, who works at the hospital with Matt’s father. Jeff had planned to go to college for music, but he went to Vietnam instead and served as a medic on helicopter ambulances. Matt is tentative when playing piano, his fingers “like a soundless / spider” (31), and Jeff encourages him to hit the keys harder. Matt comes to enjoy practicing piano because “notes are like numbers, / never changing” (33), and he finds comfort in that sense of sameness and certainty.
Every year, Matt’s father encourages him to try out for the school baseball team, and now, in seventh grade, he finally does. Along with attending daily practice before tryouts, Matt works on mastering his scales on the piano, frustrated when his hands “slip, clank, and clash / into sounds / that aren’t music” (40). Jeff’s fingers, on the other hand, “brush / across the piano keys / like branches / of the tamarind,” and Matt wonders how “such big hands [can] make such quiet music” (41). Matt envies Jeff, as his teacher seems to have faced down a closet full of “monsters” and uncovered only “empty / candy wrappers” (42).
Pages 1-42 Analysis
In the opening pages of All the Broken Pieces, seventh-grader Matt Pin introduces himself and his Vietnamese family, without clearly stating where his memories take place and who he is describing. Matt refers to his biological mother by name and by the pronouns she and her, but never calls Phang My his mother; with his biological father he creates even more distance, insisting that “his name / I will never say” (1). Similarly, Matt does not refer to his Vietnamese homeland by name in this scene, instead depicting a scene of “choking dust […] smoke and death” (3), and “rain-soaked stars” (4). Readers must read between the lines to understand that Matt is recounting his childhood during the Vietnam War, an American father who abandoned his Vietnamese mother, and how his mother gave him up to the American soldiers. Matt is still dealing with the trauma of his violent past and the pain of feeling abandoned—in different ways—by both parents, and as a result he is unwilling to face these memories head-on. By using sparse, poetic language in Matt’s point of view, the author forces readers to share in Matt’s feelings of fear, sadness, and confusion. Readers must piece together Matt’s story gradually, just as Matt himself does throughout the novel.
The first clear clue that the conflict Matt describes is the Vietnam War occurs on Page 7, when Matt hears his new American father talking about “broken” soldiers who are attacked by “angry words” (7). In this scene, Burg sets up the novel’s examination of the Vietnam War as a particularly complex and controversial one, in which both soldiers and refugees like Matt are blamed for their part in an unsuccessful conflict. While Burg does not include too much information about the politics or history of the war in her text, the novel contains a brief history of the war in its “After Words” section. As this “After Words” explains, many U.S. citizens protested the conflict, and nearly 60,000 American lost their lives to a war the Americans did not win. Veterans—and Vietnamese children like Matt—often received the brunt of the dissatisfaction with this costly conflict. Another important historical element of the novel is President Gerald Ford’s decision to airlift many Vietnamese orphans and Amerasians, children of Vietnamese women and American soldiers, out of Vietnam at the end of the war. The fictional Matt Pin is one of these children, and like the real-life children of Ford’s Operation Babylift, Matt was adopted by an American family and must reconcile his Vietnamese heritage with his place in a new country.
In fact, as the opening section of All the Broken Pieces continues, readers come to understand that Matt’s entire experience and identity are wrapped up in the Vietnam War. While Matt is now part of an American family with their own young son, Matt is acutely aware of how his Vietnamese heritage differentiates himself from the people around him. While his new mother and brother have blonde hair and a summery appearance, dark-haired Matt is “too much fall” (8). Not only Matt’s physical appearance, but also the trauma he carries, separates him from his new home and family—for Matt, the memories of a violent Vietnam are like “a pocketful / of broken pieces / I carry / inside me” (23). In addition to his biological mother and father, Matt also remembers his younger brother with a “mangled and deformed” (9) body, who could not go to America with Matt. While readers don’t yet understand what happened to Matt’s brother, the author makes it clear how important this unnamed brother is to Matt. Matt thinks that his brother “would like it here,” in a country where playgrounds exist just for children, and he “wonder[s] where” (16) his brother is now.
In this opening section, the author clearly establishes Matt’s adoptive parents as a strong, supportive presence in his life. His parents take him to events at the adoption agency, encouraging him to remember his Vietnamese heritage. However, Matt can’t equate these positive depictions of Vietnamese culture with his own dark experience of war. Matt’s parents do everything they can to show he is loved and safe in his new home, with his mother singing lullabies and his father playing baseball with Matt each weekend. Yet Matt’s parents cannot change the fact that Matt has grown up in a country that wasn’t safe, and as a result, he can’t feel fully comfortable in his new environment: “I am safe. / How can I / be home?” (12). In addition, Matt is reluctant to share his memories and fears with his parents, and his inability to communicate increases his sense of separation and insecurity.
Matt’s parents encourage him to develop a stronger, more secure identity in his new home through two activities: baseball and music. Matt responds to his father’s repeated encouragement by signing up for baseball team tryouts—he wants to “surprise” (36) his father and hopefully make him proud. Matt’s mother, on the other hand, hopes that music will “soothe his monsters” (28). Matt begins taking piano lessons with Jeff Harding, and these lessons—and Matt’s relationship with Vietnam vet Jeff—will play a key role in Matt’s growth throughout the novel. This early section establishes the importance of music throughout the novel, as Matt is awed by Jeff’s ability to “make such quiet music” (41) and hopes he can learn to do the same himself. While Matt struggles with sharing his memories and emotions in words, he senses that music might provide a way to express himself and face his fears, just as Jeff has done. In fact, these pages end with Matt’s belief that Jeff has confronted a “closet of monsters”—much like Matt’s own monsters—and found only “candy wrappers” (42). Matt “wish[es] [he] / could do that” (42) as well, and he will work to do so as the novel continues.
