Dương Thu HươngReseñas

I read Novel Without a Name (1995) and Paradise of the Blind (1988) and was quite impressed with both. This was written in 1996 and is much longer than the first two. (She has three other novels that I know of translated into English: No Man's Land, Beyond Illusions, and The Zenith.) Though there were sections that I enjoyed, this is easily my least favorite of the three. I thought it often predictable, didactic, and even occasionally lazy. In addition, though all three books were translated by the same team (Nina McPherson and Phan Huy Duong), this translation seemed awkward from time to time with odd word choices, syntax, and a reliance on cliches (a comment echoed a number of times on goodreads as well). Unlike the other works of hers that I have read, this one treats the war far more incidentally, focusing instead on life in post-war Vietnam and in particular on the marriage of Hung, a gifted composer. and his wife, Suong, an exceptional singer. Hung loses his job in a political power play and he quickly spirals into self-destructive behavior. He is mistaken by the regime as a “boat person” seeking to flee the country. As a result, he is sent to a re-education camp and his life and marriage take a drastic turn for the worse. I won’t spoil the ending but I will say that I found parts—if not much of it—hard to accept. There is plenty of social, political, and even philosophical commentary. Minor characters tend to be stick figures except for one relatively significant one who disappears from the narrative without a trace. I will admit much of my disappointment relates to my great respect for the other two novels, but despite the segments of the writing I liked here, despite the (generally) excellent portrayals of Hung and Suong, despite some moving and powerfully wrought sections, I can’t bring myself to recommend it. I’m sorry to see only no other reviews here and eagerly await others’ opinions.½

The Vietnam War. A soldier on the side of the Viet Cong, on the side of a different history, on the side of his memories. A story nameless only because its had so many names.

Quan, who enlists to fight for his country as an idealistic 18-year-old, has now fought for North Vietnam for a decade. Those ten years have taught him, if nothing else, the costs of idealism. Even as he tries to balance his patriotism with his cynicism, Quan turns to old memories for solace. Given the chance to return home, he seizes on the chance to make the physically and psychologically demanding journey. That journey forces him to confront his past, among other things: his father, his childhood sweetheart, his boyhood friends now maimed or dead, and ultimately to recognize that his innocence and his idealism came at an enormous price. How should he handle his disillusionment with the Communist Party? A quiet, emotionally charged book, this often reads like the stories of an old man looking back on his life. That it is, instead, the reflections of a 28-year-old veteran, told mostly through a series of vignettes, illustrates the power of the book. Indeed, the collection of loosely connected “stories” really can be seen as almost a mythic quest by a hero toward (self-)knowledge.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Thu-Huong-Au-zenith/121587

> DEUX CHEFS-D'OEUVRES. DEUX ROMANS INITIATIQUES. À LIRE ABSOLUMENT. — Qualité de la construction romanesque. Écriture à la fois sobre et flamboyante, tendre et crue, évoquant tragédies, destins, pouvoir. C'est bien la magie de la littérature que cette capacité d'emmener le lecteur dans les méandres de l'histoire vietnamienne contemporaine, à travers le regard des différents personnages.
La vie de l'auteur ; qui vit depuis 2006 à Paris, vaut un roman. Cette femme née en 1947 au Vietnam, a connu la guerre contre les français, a lutté 20 ans contre les américains et 20 ans contre le pouvoir en place à Hanoï. (Jacques MARMEY)
• Duong Thu Huong, Terre des oublis, 794 pages, 2006, Sabine Wespieser
• Id., Au Zénith, 800 pages, 2009, Sabine Wespieser
—Carnets du Yoga, (278), Juin 2009, (p. 19)

Hang, a Vietnamese woman, came of age in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Hang never knew her father, a teacher driven into exile during the land reform era by a local Communist party leader who was also his brother-in-law. Hang’s Aunt Tam, her father’s sister, lavishes affection on her young niece as the sole member of her generation to carry on the family line. Hang’s mother increasingly devotes her meager resources to support her party member brother and his family. Hang embodies the tension between the two sides of her family.

This novel depicts a beautiful but broken country. A great loneliness permeates the novel. Hang’s mother and her Aunt Tam pull her in different directions, trying to force her to choose between the two sides of her family. As she tries to do her duty to both families, Hang’s isolation grows, yet she is still young enough to dream of a different future.½

The Communist party of North Vietnam in the 20th century destroyed families and disrupted whole communities. In the 1950s, anybody who had a house, any land, the smallest noodle shack, was denounced and forced to give up all their possessions, and shunned and shamed. Madame Que, the protagonist's mother, us married to a teacher, who is denounced. Hang's father leaves the village, and we never see him again. In fact, you will miss Hang's conception if you're not paying attention. Hang's Aunt Tam, her father's sister, maintains a lifelong love, defence, and reverence for him, and hates Madame Que for not keeping his memory alive for Hang. Madame Que, on the other hand, reveres her brother, a minor official in the Communist party, and the instigator of the denouncements of Hang's father and sister, and the consequent destruction of their lives. But Aunt Tam, really the central character, works her fingers to the Bone and rebuilds her life, while the petty Communist official lives a life of deprivation and hypocrisy. Hang is denied a father, and has a troubled relationship with her mother, which eventually totally crumbles. This book is a chronicle of what beauty, energy, spirit, and inspiration lies in the Earth, and how Humans can miss the whole beauty and happiness this life offers them, believing that happiness lies in material success, the esteem of whatever group is currently in power, and false pride.

Vegans will be grossed out by many parts of this book:
Page 139
"She had made one of my favorite soups: a mixture of lily buds, puree of a crab, and crab eggs. The eggs floated like clouds of spun gold in the middle of the lily buds, translucent from the cooking."
P.140
" 'Perfect. The women can start cutting up the scallions and the parsley. We're going to make an unforgettable tripe stew out of this,' another man chimed in. 'Oh, yeah, like the last time, for old Toan's memorial service. It's still stank of excrement,' someone shot back. The father spoke now. 'You are bitter, aren't you? I told you: I was drunk, and so I let the Cuu Brothers help me. That was fatal. Everyone knows they'll eat just about anything.' "
P.141
"Next to the kitchen door, a young man was shaving the butchered pig. His razor glinted in the beam of the lamp. Another young man with just the shadow of a mustache--he couldn't have been more than 17 or 18--Doused the pig with buckets of boiling water, dumping them over it at regular intervals. The blade of the first man's razor followed the rhythm of each Cascade of water and the pig's black bristles sheared off to reveal the naked whiteness of its skin."
P.176-177
"I obeyed, taking the plate of blood custard from him and putting it down on the tray. The dish looked good: the blood had congealed into a thick gelatin; there wasn't a trace of liquid at The rim; and the surface was sprinkled with fine strips of duck liver, crushed garlic, and peanuts grilled to a perfect golden brown."

Aunt Tam scolding Madame Que for starving Hang to buy medicine for her diabetic brother:
P.187
"In the end, everything comes to light in this world. The needle always emerges from the haystack. Do you think you can hide human actions, day in and day out, as they are revealed to others? Even from my village, I know about your life, see the price you pay. I don't reproach you. We all turn to family. After all, blood runs thick. And this love I feel for my brother, how could I deny it to others? But I want you to understand something clearly: your brother is my family's mortal enemy. He killed my brother. I forbid you to use my money to feed him."

Hang's despair over her mother's love for her brother, at the expense of love for her, and her trying to make sense of human life:
P.190
"I saw my mother, at that moment, grasping her knees to her chest in the middle of an empty house. I felt the tears trickled down my cheeks, one by one. That's the way it is. There's no dignity on this Earth for those who live and breathe in misery. I hadn't lost again."
P.199
"He shook my hand, kissed my head, and quickly crossed the street. Never look back, I thought, even for a second. No happiness can hold; every life, every dream, has its unraveling."
P.202-203
"There was something sinister about this tranquility, and order of this existence. It was the peace of a swamp, a far cry from our storms and squalls. Russian culture had bred too many broken dreams, all that was left was the pure, thin air of ideals, too poor to sustain human life, or its need for creativity and fulfillment. These calm, resigned faces seem engraved with no more than the memory of a culture that had once contributed milestones to the history of civilization."

To understand Duong Thu Huong's novels, it is important to understand her background. At the age of twenty, Duong left college and volunteered to lead a Communist Youth Brigade to the front in the "War Against the Americans." She served in one of the most bombed regions of the war and was one of three survivors out of her group of twenty. She was also at the front during the 1979 Chinese attack on Vietnam. But during the 1980s, she became a critic of the Communist regime and an advocate for human rights. She was expelled from the party in 1989, imprisoned briefly in 1991 (the year she published this novel), and had her passport revoked so she could not leave the country. Her books were extremely popular prior to her imprisonment, but they are now banned and everything she has written since then has had to be published abroad, despite being written for a Vietnamese audience.

Novel Without a Name is the story of Quan, a young Communist soldier who, when the story opens, has been fighting the Americans for ten years. He left his village at the age of eighteen, excited for glory and idealistic about his nation's role in history. But after ten years of hunger, disease, and killing, "there is this gangrene that eats at the heart." He is summoned to company headquarters by a former classmate, who tells him that their friend has been imprisoned in a camp for psychiatric cases, and can he go and see what might be done for him. Afterward he is given leave to visit their hometown for a couple of days. But his brief visit is not a return to his dreamed of childhood, it is the source of more disillusionment.

Never. We never forget anything, never lose anything, never exchange anything, never undo what has been. There is no way back to the source, to the place where the pure, clear water once gushed forth.

Quan's idealism may be in tatters, but the war goes on. He returns to the front and further horrific warfare, corruption, and spiritual decay.

Duong has said that she never intended to become a writer. She served as an exemplary soldier, hoarding her impressions, and began to write as an expression of her pain. That pain is clearly reflected in Quan's odyssey between war and home and back again.

You know the kind of book you buy because you know it will be good, but then you side-eye it on your shelves because you also know it will be devastating, and you are just so seldom in the mood for devastating? Yeah, that was this book. I finally took it off the shelves and read it because it was from this month's region for the Read the World 21 challenge, which I am grateful for. I ended up really loving this book, even as I spent most of it wanting to strangle one of the main characters.

Summoned by telegram to help her ailing uncle, Hang spends most of her time on the train reminiscing over her childhood. Now a textile worker in Russia, Hang grew up without a father in the slums of Hanoi, Vietnam. But she remains connected to her mother's rural home village by her Aunt Tam, who has attached herself to Hang as the only continuation of her family line.

Hang's entire life is shaped by something that happened years before she was born. Her mother's brother, Uncle Chinh, came back from war as an official in charge of land reform. Hang's mother has married someone in the landowner class, and in the upheaval of land reform her father is exiled, Aunt Tam loses everything, and Hang's mother eventually flees to Hanoi. While Hang's father dies in exile (after a brief reappearance during which he fathers Hang), Hang, her mother, Aunt Tam, and Uncle Chinh remain both bound together and torn apart by their shared history, their dedication to shar4ed blood, and the failures of Vietnam's experiments in Communism.

By turns beautiful and heartbreaking. So glad I finally read it.

Ugh. No. Boring. I can't.

Peu après la guerre d’Indochine, Bê part de son village natal pour retrouver son père, officier cantonné à la frontière du Vietnam. Un roman initiatique dans un pays encore largement rural, montagnard et superstitieux, qui amène l’adolescente à découvrir des traditions, des cuisines, des paysages et des situations sociales parfois dramatiques. Un texte qui peut sembler par moments naïf, sentimental ou même peu crédible, mais qui permet au lecteur occidental d’appréhender une littérature et une culture peu connue.

I could not get into this book -- the disjointed narrative, fuzzy characters, and the thoughts in italics did not work for me, even though, I am sure, the story is an important one.

Hintergrund dieses Romans ist der Vietnamkrieg, geschildert werden die Geschehnisse aus der Sicht eines Leutnants der Vietcong. Wer sich jedoch explizite Schilderungen der Kampfhandlungen erwartet wird enttäuscht, auch wenn sie Teil des Buches sind. Im Mittelpunkt stehen eher die zwischenmenschlichen Beziehungen des Hauptprotagonisten zu seiner Familie, seinen Jugendfreunden und seinen Untergebenen und Vorgesetzten. Das Buch ist immer wieder angereichert mit Rückblenden auf die Jugenderinnerungen bzw. mit Traumsequenzen. Der Roman ist sicherlich keine klassische (Anti-)Kriegsliteratur, aber durchaus lesenswert, wenngleich mir die Schilderung mancher Kriegserlebnisse nicht immer realistisch vorkam.

Überraschenderweise ist das Buch auch keine Abrechnung mit den Amerikanern, vielmehr finden sich versöhnliche Passagen und durchaus auch Systemkritik, entlarvt zB in einem vom Hauptprotagonisten belauschten Diskurs zweier Politfunktionäre. Die Autorin lebt mittlerweile im Exil, ihre Bücher sind in Vietnam zum großen Teil verboten.

Interessant übrigens auch, dass der Roman von einer Frau aus der Sicht eines männlichen Vietcongs geschildert worden ist. Die Autorin selbst war Kriegsfreiwillige, weiß also, wovon sie schreibt.

I thought this was going to be really good. It was the first novel translated from Vietnamese to English even though it was only published in 1988. That says a huge amount about many things, most of it supposition.

The plot follows the life of Hang, a young woman, in a series of flashbacks and contemporary reflections. We follow her as she studies in Moscow and visiting her ageing uncle there.

As she grows, she discovers what has caused the tensions between her, her mother, her aunt and her uncle, and she fights to keep in play multiple loyalties.

Her childhood has been difficult with an absent father and a mother who has sacrificed everything for her. There’s a whole ton of emotional baggage buried beneath the surface, as you’d expect from Vietnam in the 1980s, but while I really wanted an insight into Vietnamese culture and particularly the political issues, I didn’t really get it in the form I was expecting.

I guess I was after docudrama and what I got was the story of one family from the point of view of a active critic of the Communist government.

The fact that Vietnam has banned the book for its political stance surprises me on the one hand because it doesn’t have outright criticism in its pages. But when you’ve lived all your life serving a Communist leadership, you learn, I suppose, to make your case with more subtlety.

This makes the criticism harder to spot in a novel that places what we’re having for dinner and a description of a moonlit night on the same par as what the local communist cadre is up to.

And maybe that’s the point, that the Party isn’t front and centre, that daily life is more important than political ideology. If so, the novel works a charm.

The storytelling is very fragmented and the characters aren’t developed too much. While this may be frustrating for western readers, it definitely romanticises the beauty of Vietnam and cultural essentials like its food and so, for Vietnamese, I can see how would strike a very melodic chord.

Die junge Vietnamesin Hàng arbeitet 1988 in UdSSR. Das Buch setzt ein, als sie ein Telegramm von ihrem Onkel Chinh erhält, dass sie sofort nach Moskau kommen soll, wo er lebt und erkrankt ist. Obwohl Hàng selbst schwach und nicht gesund ist, macht sie sich auf die Zugfahrt und denkt über ihre Kindheit und Jugend nach. Hàngs Leben war ein Hin und Her der Pflichterfüllung. Denn bereits ihr Vater wurde in der „Agrarreform“ als “Grundbesitzer“ verfolgt, wo der Onkle Chinh einer der Hauprotagonisten war. Später dann ist es vor allem die Schwester des Vaters, Tante Thâm, die Hàng immer wieder Gutes tut. Hàngs Mutter hingegen hält zu ihrem Bruder und unterstützt ihn, wo sie kann.
Das Ende der Geschichte ist, dass Hàng entschließt, ihren eigenen Weg zu gehen und sich aus der familiären Verstrickung zu lösen.
Mir war Vietnam von dieser Seite bisher unbekannt. Ich wusste bisher viel zu wenig über dieses Land, dass Vietnam menschenrechtsmäßig als bedenklich gilt, war mir bisher gar nicht klar.½

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Thu-Huong-Terre-des-oublis/14435
> Le Livre de Poche (celiatas) : https://fr.calameo.com/books/0043038443afedcb9a996

> DEUX CHEFS-D'OEUVRES. DEUX ROMANS INITIATIQUES. À LIRE ABSOLUMENT. — Qualité de la construction romanesque. Écriture à la fois sobre et flamboyante, tendre et crue, évoquant tragédies, destins, pouvoir. C'est bien la magie de la littérature que cette capacité d'emmener le lecteur dans les méandres de l'histoire vietnamienne contemporaine, à travers le regard des différents personnages.
La vie de l'auteur ; qui vit depuis 2006 à Paris, vaut un roman. Cette femme née en 1947 au Vietnam, a connu la guerre contre les français, a lutté 20 ans contre les américains et 20 ans contre le pouvoir en place à Hanoï. (Jacques MARMEY)
• Duong Thu Huong, Terre des oublis, 794 pages, 2006, Sabine Wespieser
• Id., Au Zénith, 800 pages, 2009, Sabine Wespieser
—Carnets du Yoga, (278), Juin 2009, (p. 19)

> Harzoune Mustapha. Terre des oublis. — Duong Thu Huong traduit du vietnamien par Phan Huy Duong éditions Sabine Wespieser, 2006.
In: Hommes et Migrations, n°1263, Septembre-octobre 2006. Immigration et marché du travail. Un siècle d'histoire. pp. 154-155. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://www.persee.fr/doc/homig_1142-852x_2006_num_1263_1_5155_t1_0154_0000_1

> Terre des oublis, magistral roman de l'après-guerre du Vietnam, a obtenu le Grand Prix des lectrices de
—Elle 2007.

> Duonq Thu Huonq porte la littérature à son acmé. Nous fait plonger au coeur de la chair et de l'esprit dans des ténèbres traversées d'éclats de lumière. Chef-d'oeuvre ? Oui.
—Stéphane Guibourgé, Le Fiqaro

> Avocate des droits de l'homme et des réformes démocratiques, Duong Thu Huong n'a cessé de défendre vigoureusement, à travers ses livres, ses engagements. Exclue du Parti communiste vietnamien en 1990 pour « indiscipline », elle est arrêtée et emprisonnée sans procès le 14 avril 1991. Son arrestation provoque un large mouvement de protestation en France et aux Etats-Unis. Elle est libérée en novembre 1991. Elle vit désormais en France.
—Le Livre de Poche

> Au lendemain de la guerre du Vietnam, Miên doit accomplir son devoir face à l’opinion et retourner vivre auprès de son mari qu’elle croyait mort, celui-ci s'étant sacrifié pour son pays. Sous la pression communautaire, elle quitte son mari, son enfant et une vie très confortable pour une vie de dénuement... Une haine s’installe entre ce trio amoureux qui subissent le malheur qui les afflige.... Ce livre nous plonge dans les odeurs, les traditions, la culture et les couleurs du Vietnam. Une merveille !
—Gwenaëlle Colombe, Espace culturel Leclerc à Mimizan (40)

I did not particularly like this book. At times I had difficulties keeping apart whether the president was talking, or the other man.

I probably am not enough informed about the typical (political) circumstances in Vietnam, for many points to things that happened or people, known issues, went past me. That made it quite a hard read

Growing up in Vietnam during the communist 70s and 80s, young Hang is used to hardships. Her cadre maternal uncle has her father's family classified as landlords (for owning a small paddy). Her father is sent away. Hang is raised alone, by her mother with her paternal aunt's help. Her paternal Aunt Tam can never forgive Hang's father for sending her brother away, most likely to his death. Tam can barely tolerate how Hang's mother continually helps her brother, despite the fact that he ruined her own family's lives. She feeds his kids when he is struggling, even though Hang then suffers lack of food. She sells the inheritance jewelry Tam gave for Hang. Her brother even says her work as a maker and vendor of vermicelli means she is not a real proper peasant.

Hang manages to get to college, but then needs to drop out to help her mother. In this novel we hear many stories of the typical Vietnamese and how they struggle through this time period of uncertainty.

Thanh adolescent au sein d'une famille aimante, découvre son homosexualité. Dans un pays où pèse le poids des traditions culturelles et religieuses ainsi et que le poids de l'idéologie communiste et nationaliste, l'homosexualité est un sujet tabou, tout juste toléré qui doit être caché. Thanh est déboussolé, perdu, seul face à ses interrogations et désirs. Se laissant entraîner et manipuler, il plonge dans une longue fuite en avant qui le mènera aux travaux forcés dans un bagne au plus profond de la jungle vietnamienne.

Au travers de l'histoire de Thanh, l'auteur nous livre une peinture terrible de l'univers des camps de travail vietnamien et d'une société très inégalitaire et totalement corrompue, ou pour une majorité de la population la débrouille, l'entraide familiale ou entre voisin sont les seuls moyens de survie.

Je ne connaissais pas cette auteure, et je connais très mal ce pays, le Vietnam, et cette société mélangeant la culturea ancestrale fortement imprégnée de bouddhisme, la culture occidentale suite à la colonisation française et la présence américaine, et une culture politique communiste s'appuyant sur le souvenir des guerres victorieuse anticoloniale et de libération. C'est aussi la description d'un parcours d'un adolescent devant mener sa vie, basculer dans l'âge adulte, balloter entre la nostalgie de la sécurité du cocon familiale et de la protection amoureuse de sa mère et se laisser aller par le destin ou en assumer ses choix et décisions.

Malgré un style agréable, l'histoire de Thanh ne m'a pas captivée. Ses incessantes introspections écrit en italique, comme une voix off, relèvent parfois de la psychologie de comptoir et d'un romantisme fleur bleu qui m'a souvent agacé.
"Destin", "sort", deux mots qui reviennent de manière récurante dans le texte de ce roman. Au fil des pages, je n'ai pas commpris si ce rappel permanent était une véritable croyance de Thu Huong Duong en la fatalité et la prédestination, philosophie et conception de la vie qui me dérange, ou un tic de style, comme les termes "biche" et "faon" qui reviennent sans cesse pour parler de la mère et de son fils. Au fil du texte, on balance sans cesse entre deux conceptions de la vie, deux philosophies. Notre vie est-elle régie par le destin ou est-elle soumise à notre volonté et nos choix ?

J'ai été également perturbé par des petites phrases ponctuant de temps en temps le texte qui rélève au minimum du cliché sinon au pire d'une conception de la société qui me dérange là encore. Exemple : à propos des femmes "mais elles appartenaient au sexe faible, au beau sexe, et leurs terribles frustrations pouvaient se déchaîner en colères terribles,..." (p820) ou bien concernant l'homosexualité et le fait d'assumer à ne pas fonder un couple pour procréer "..on ne se marie pas, on n'a pas d'enfant, on se borne à suivre ses envies, à faire l'amour et à s'amuser" (p444)

En fin de roman, l'auteur écrit " Un auteur même très inventif, n'aurait pu imaginer un tel changement"(p825) et j'ai eu là encore beaucoup mal à comprendre l'intérêt de ce propos. Est-ce du second degré, en tout cas celà vient tout d'un coup cassé l'ensemble du texte et la magie d'un roman. D'autant plus si on le rapproche de l'épilogue de l'auteur laissant entendre qu'à l'origine de ce roman il y a des faits et évènements réels.

En reprenant à plusieurs reprises mes commentaires avant de la publier pour essayer d'argumenter mon appréciation du roman, je découvre petit à petit la subtilité du texte et ce basculement incessant entre ces deux philosophies de vie : une vie de sérénité face aux évènements lié au destin et à la fatalité,"nous ne sommes toi et moi que de pauvres marionnettes actionnées par des puissances invisibles. Nos volontés ne sont qu'illusion, aussi fugace que des feux follets" (p639) ou une vie d'angoisse et de peur lié à la volonté de mené sa vie "la vie se passe à faire des choix, et ce jusqu'à notre mort" (p719). Donc finalement un roman qui me semblait sans grand intérêt mis à part la découverte d'un pays, d'une culture et surtout de personnages qui demeurent attachants et qui finalement s'avère d'une profondeur impressionnante écrit d'une manière discrète et assez subtile.

A retenir ce passage : "l'histoire de l'espèce humaine s'est construite autour d'un verbe unique : utiliser" (p747)

Een jonge, inmiddels hertrouwde Vietnamese wordt geconfronteerd met de onverwachte terugkomst van haar eerste man, een soldaat die negen jaar vermist werd½

Fra innsiden av det vitnamesiske samfunnet med en forfatter fra kommunistbevegelsen. Et samfunn i endring fra psykiatri-kommunismen med de latterligste figurer i partiledelsen og hovedpersonen har familie der og i gammel rikmannsklasse. Sovjet besøkes og markedsøkonomien slår siden sakte igjennom i Vietnam. Hovedfortellingen er med mor og datter og tante - fars søster som hele tiden sørger over sin tapte bror og legger all sin kjærlighet på at niesen skal lykkes.

This book, written by a Vietnamese Woman and translated to English by Phan Huy Duong and Nina McPerson, is set in Vietnam and Russia after the Vietnam War with the U.S. and tells the story of Hang, her mother and her paternal aunt and through them tells the story of Vietnam after the war and the emergence of communism. This story starts in Russia where Hang is working as an exported worker in a textile plant and is told in a series of flashbacks in Hangs life. We see Hang as a young girl with her single parent mother wondering about her father. She meets her paternal aunt. Later she meets her maternal uncle and his family. Hang's mother is at first devoted to her daughter but then becomes devoted to her brother's children and spends all she has in her life for them. At the same time, the paternal aunt devotes all her life to becoming rich and pursuing her hatred of Hang's uncle. If it wasn't for this paternal aunt, Hang would have nothing. I really liked the writing (or translated) writing. It was easy to read, yet very descriptive of the land and culture. I liked learning about Vietnam through this women's writing. She wrote under communism. She was also an active member of the communist party but wrote under a liberation of the writer. A freedom to write about the country rather than political claptrap. I have read other books about communism and books of communism in Asian culture and I just don't get it. It seems so absurd. I can only think that things must have been so bad to allow people to make such crazy political decisions that seem so harmful. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in reading women authors of different languages and cultures.

Notwithstanding that this book takes place in Vietnam, a place I have never been and know little about, this brilliant author swept me up in the story, characters, and setting. It's been awhile since I finished the book but I remember it as being a moving and sensual love story, as well as a meditation on war.

Duong Thu Huong's "Paradise of the Blind" was the first Vietnamese novel ever published in the United States. Huong's work was banned in her own country due to its political content and she has been imprisoned there as well.

That doesn't mean the novel is simply a political statement. In fact, it feels more like a personal story. The novel tells the story of Hang, a worker who is forced into "exported labor" in Russia. She travels by train to visit a hated uncle, and reminisces about her family's story. Communism's impact is thread running through her family's struggle to survive.

What I really liked about the book was the look at Vietnamese culture and the impact Communism had on the country. I gave the book a middling rating mainly because it lacks an emotional core that would have made the novel more powerful. It is perhaps, by design-- perhaps you need to put your emotions away to survive as this family did-- but it made it hard to truly connect with the characters.

Overall, an interesting book that I'm glad to have read.

This is a first person narration by a young Vietnamese girl, Hang, living in the 1980s who is an "exported worker" to a Russian textile factory. She is called by her Uncle, who used to be a local leader in the Vietnamese communist party, to visit him. On her train ride there, she revisits her life in flashbacks. She remembers her relationship with her mother from childhood through the present. Her mother (the sister of the uncle I mentioned) had a relationship with a young man who was not approved of by her communist brother and they were never married, though he is Hang's father. She also has an Aunt Tam, her father's sister, who is single and lavishes all of her earnings on Hang, the only descendant of her family.

Apparently, Huong's books were all banned in Vietnam for their political content and were first translated into English in 1993. Huong was even imprisoned in the 1990s for her outspokenness. Because I knew these things before reading the book, I was expecting it to be more politically damning than it was (I was thinking of Wild Swans by Jung Chang). Instead, I found this to be a book about the life of one typical family. It was definitely impacted by political upheaval and that comes through, but it wasn't the focus of the book. I actually found more insight into the daily life of the Vietnamese through the excellent descriptions of food and cultural celebrations and traditions.

Overall, I enjoyed this book, though it wasn't quite as memorable or radical as I hoped it might be.½

Lovesick doves cooed all day in the bamboo. Grasshoppers flew in the grass on the edge of the dikes. Women laughed, teasing and chasing one another, rolling in the rice fields. They made us laugh...There was once a kite that dipped and swayed in the blue of the sky, our dreams reeling in the same space...And there is the earth, this mud where the flesh rots, where eyes decompose. These arms, these legs that crunch in the jaws of the boars. The souls ulcerated and foul from killing, the bodies so starved for tenderness that they haunt stables in search of pleasure. There is this gangrene that eats at the heart...

This is the first book I've read that is wholly concerned with the Vietnam War. It was likely simple procrastination that birthed the mission to have my first literature experience set in complete opposition to the mythos of the US, the endless me me me of protests and veterans and yet another tale of isolated invaders making a far away country their Agent Orange playground of honored atrocity. People suffered, yes, people died, yes, but these people could escape. Those who feel I'm belittling, look at the wealth of white-gaze narratives and monuments and politics on one end. Then make your way over.

Orangutans are almost human. There's no tastier flesh.

One, the author was a Việt cộng, before whom the United States fell to its knees. Two, the author is a woman, one of three survivors of forty after setting off at twenty years of age, and the first scene is of female bodies with the remains of breasts and genitals strewn around their worm-ridden corpses. Three, none of this matters, but such a rare perspective does deserve our full attention.

It's like dreaming. That's what it's like when you plunge into a forest. You can call and scream all you like; no one can hear you.

Bear in mind that this is the story of a winner. Bear in mind at all times that this is the story of a soldier whose hope has bred with their despair for far too long. Always remember that this is just one of the usual youths plumped up by the idealogues for the slaughter, for whom it took ten years of mishaps of death and decay on a nightmare landscape to reach the nickname of 'Chief' and the insanity to show for it.

Fighting and dying; two acts, the same indescribable beauty of the war.
Suddenly I remembered my mother's savage, heartrending cry, her face bathed in sweat, the horrible spasm that had disfigured her, and then, on that same, horribly twisted face, the radiance of the smile born with a child's cry, when she saw his tiny red legs beat the air...Barbaric beauty of life, of creation. It had slipped away, dissolved in the myriad memories of childhood.
I was seized with terror. No one can bathe in two different streams at the same time. Me, my friends, we had lived this war for too long, steeped ourselves for too long in the beauty of all its moments of fire and blood. Would it still be possible, one day, for us to go back, to rediscover our roots, the beauty of creation, the rapture of a peaceful life?

Fortunately for us, there is a mercy the soul of someone utterly sick with blood spilled for an ideal, and so we don't mind being enmeshed in the memorial swamp of this "gook" as much. Or perhaps we do, for we don't want to hear of forbearance of raping out of concern for the eventual danger of pregnant labor, we don't want to know about what horrors of flora and fauna will be birthed out of a healthy sprinkling of mortar and military grade herbicide, we don't want to see the blonde-haired blue-eyed as an unnatural invader after all this respect and courage and love of the other side, a side with its own measure of brave people and unfeeling corruption. You don't need Communism for an all but (are you sure?) Soylent Green extraction of the many by the few. You just need humanity, greed, their inherent love for lies, all of them ubiquitous, all of them wherever you may lay your weary head.

"Everything we've paid for with our blood belongs to the people."
Kha just laughed. "Ah, but do the people really exist?...You see, the people, they do exist from time to time, but they're only a shadow. When they need rice, the people are the buffalo that pulls the plow. When they need soldiers, they cover the people with armor, put guns in the people's hands. When all is said and done, at the festivals, when it comes time for the banquets, they put the people on an alter, and feed them incense and ashes. But the real food, that's always for them."

We haven't even touched upon the redemption and the fever craze, the insipidness of mortal circumstances and the graveyard leech of military success, the postcolonial inheritance of cannibal ideals and the retributional maw of time, what happens when everything is said and done and the pieces expect to be picked up. But you can find out for yourself.

Revolution, like love, blooms and then withers. But revolution rots much faster than love, 'comrade.'