Family is a defining element in Things We Lost to the Water, but so is the conflict between familial needs/expectations and individual identity. Although most visible through Bình/Ben’s character development, this dynamic is present in the rest of his biological family: Hương, Tuấn, and Công.

Bình, though born in a Vietnamese community—a refugee camp—comes to the US as an infant. Therefore, though he’s naturalized as an American citizen with his mother and brother, of the three, he’s the most fully enculturated in New Orleans/American culture, to the point that Hương thinks, “[Bình]’s American and will like this kind of stuff [a surf ‘n’ turf meal]” (180). Although Hương and Tuấn try to pass on aspects of Vietnamese culture to Bình, such as food, language, and oral anecdotes of family history, multiple factors impede their efforts. These challenges include racism and the immigrant experience (See Themes and Background); Hương’s stress as a single mother; Tuấn’s coming-of-age struggle; and, most of all, the constant comparisons between Bình and Công, the father he never knew, whom his mother deified as a mystical heroic figure, making him equally impossible to please or to emulate.