The heart-wrenching story of Cao Long Nguyen from Andrew Lam's Show and Tell, gracefully expresses all the emotions behind the experiences of Vietnamese refugees in their exodus to the United States. It gives an example of a young Vietnamese boy who comes to America and has difficulty assimilating due to his background and culture. Other students at school make fun of the poor boy by insulting his name or showing gruesome pictures of the war, but Kal is still able to find strong friendship with the good-natured Bobby. Together they endure all the harsh criticism from fellow students, which brings them closer in their friendship. At the end, Kal goes to the front of the class to draw out his life story on the board and gets Bobby to translate his drawings in English. After they succeed in portraying Kal's sad story, Kal looks to Bobby as if to say "ain't we a good team or what?" (Lam 298). Bobby wants to reply, but instead keeps quiet in order to remain in the silence of their friendship. This touching display of unspoken love is such a great example of high-context, because it helps portray the bond which these two friends share. They know each other so well that dialogue can be exchanged between them without any words, an ability that is reserved only for the best of friends.
This message of high-context might be referred to through out the whole short story, because the author never once uses quotations to present dialogue, but instead integrates communication into sentences and phrases. Lam might be using this lack of quotations as a way of saying that communication does not need to be directly spoken, but can be interpreted through actions and expressions too. So not only does Lam give a good detailed account of how the Vietnamese must have felt coming to America, but he also effectively portrays high context character within his story.
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