Dust Child centers the experiences of Vietnamese people during the war, and its most important theme is the tragic and devastating repercussions of war on Việt Nam and its people. The novel specifically examines the poverty caused by war, the sexual exploitation of Vietnamese women, the plight of Amerasian children after the war, communist persecution of “collaborators,” and chemical warfare.

The French occupation of Việt Nam and the wars that followed had a devastating economic impact on the region. The novel shows that Trang and Quỳnh are driven to sex work in order to help their parents repay a sizeable debt. This plot point is rooted in the real-life history of Việt Nam: Small farmers like Trang’s parents struggled to make ends meet because the colonial government sought to exploit the Vietnamese. The war of the 1960s and 1970s further destabilized the region, and several young women turned to sex work to earn money. Trang’s madam tells her, “[E]very girl who enters this place says [no] at first, but trust me, you won’t be able to hold yourself back” (84); she ends up being right since the money for sex work was comparatively very generous in those lean times.