Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

[The Mountains Sing] is beautifully written, heartbreaking and uplifting by turns. It′s the story of three generations of the Trần family. The story begins in 1972 with twelve-year-old Hương and her grandmother trying to get home from school during a bombing by American B-52s. They are the only remaining members of their family in Hà Nội, as Hương′s parents and uncles are in the south fighting to rid their country of the occupying Americans. Daily life is almost impossible, yet show more they not only survive, but succeed, thanks to Hương′s grandmother, who is tenacious, hardworking, and experienced in survival. The story then switches to the grandmother′s voice, who is telling her granddaughter about her family′s history.

Trần Diệu Lan was born in 1920 to a wealthy farming family in northern Việt Nam. She lives through the Japanese occupation during World War II, the famine known as The Great Hunger in 1945, and the Land Reforms that devastated her family. These alternating chapters flow smoothly and complement each other as one occupying army is replaced by another. Themes of love for family and ancestral land, the kindness of strangers, and the value of education run parallel to scenes of betrayal, senseless brutality, PTSD, and the effects of Agent Orange. The Trần family represents both a fictionalized version of the author′s own family and a metaphor for the country as a whole as it is torn apart, reunited, tested, and made whole.

Born in northern Vietnam in 1973, but growing up in southern Vietnam after the war, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai had a foot in both worlds. She won a writing competition at the age of ten, but her parents did not want her to be a writer due to the hardships authors faced from censors. Her brother started to teach her English when she was in the eighth grade, and she eventually won a scholarship to university in Australia. She has written eleven books⁠—poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction⁠—but this is her first novel and first book to be written in English.

It may seem ironic that I have chosen to write this novel, by far my most personal work to date, in English, which is also the language of invasive military powers and cultures. But this language has given me a new voice and a way to fictionalize the turbulent events of my country's past, including those that have not yet been sufficiently documented in Vietnamese fiction, such as the Great Hunger or the Land Reform. I am also responding to Hollywood movies and novels written by those Westerners who continue to see our country only as a place of war and the Vietnamese as people who don't need to speak⁠—or, when we do, sound simple, naïve, cruel, or opportunistic. The canon of Việt Nam war and post-war literature in English is vast, but there is a lack of voices from inside Việt Nam.
-Climbing Many Mountains: an Essay by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

I highly recommend this book, both for the beautiful writing and the story. I appreciate the author′s attempt to bring a Vietnamese voice into American war literature, and I tried to honor her by replicating her use of Vietnamese diacritics. I can′t wait to read her next novel, [Dust Child], which is also set to be published by Algonquin Books. show less

Young Hoang lives with her grandmother in 1975 in the northern part of Vietnam during the war. Her father was drafted and her mother went to find him; her grandmother is her rock as they suffer poverty and as family members start to return in the ensuing years. Interspersed are her grandmother's reminiscences of the past, starting out in a well-to-do family that was attacked during the Land Reform, forced out and living on the run with five of her six children. Most of all, it's about their show more indomitable spirits in the face of tragedy.

This was really excellent historical fiction, giving a more complicated, nuanced look at the Vietnam war than I've read before. Hoang and her grandma, Dieu Lan, endure so much heartbreak and the war is told in dispassionate but clear description, that it was hard to read at times. But there are also moments of joy. I loved Dieu Lan's commitment to her family and bravery in finding a way to come through all the hardship she does, and cheered Hoang as she grew up in war, learned difficult truths about her family members, but found happiness as well. Most of all, I learned a lot about Vietnamese history and how difficult their civil war was. Author Nguyen Phan Que Mai is a poet whose works have been translated, and this is the first of her novels to be written in English. I look forward to reading more of her work. show less

In post-war Vietnam, children with an American GI father and a Vietnamese mother were frequently ostracized or persecuted as being the product of the defeated enemy and a collaborating mother. Often having different features, hair, or skin color, the children were easy targets. In this, her second novel, Nguyen writes about the issue from multiple perspectives and a generosity of understanding for the complexities of human failings.

Phong is trying to get a visa to the US based on his show more heritage via the Amerasian Homecoming Act. Despite being tall and having the hair and skin coloring of a Black man, he lacks the required proof that his father was an American serviceman: he is an orphan.

In 1969 Trang and her sister leave their village for Saigon, hoping to make enough money to pay off their parents' debt and return to school. The seemingly harmless job of being a bar girl, who makes lot of money flirting and drinking Saigon tea, turns out to be nothing more than prostitution with American soldiers.

In 2016 Vietnam vet Dan Ashland and his wife are making a trip to Vietnam to try and put to rest some of Dan's ghosts. In addition, Dan hopes to secretly find out what happened to Kim, the bar girl he lived with during the war, and the child she was carrying.

At first, the conclusion of the story seemed obvious, but it was not. As each person's backstory is told, the complexity of the issues and relationships deepens. The author writes beautifully about the ugly side of war. show less

I grew up as the Vietnam War was raging. I knew several Americans who dodged the draft and came to Canada. I can remember the horrific images on the nightly news, including that famous photo of the young naked girl running down the street after napalm was dumped on her village. So I've always been interested in how the war affected the Vietnamese. This book is the story of a northern Vietnamese family before, during and after the war. It is fiction but the author says at the back that it is show more based upon experiences of her own family and those around her.

The two main characters are Tran Dieu Lan and her granddaughter Huong. The book starts in 1972 when the two of them are living in Ha Noi, sheltering from the bombs being dropped on their city as they can.Huong's father (Hoang) and mother (Ngoc) are both off in the war fields as are Ngoc's three brothers Dat, Thuan, and Sang. Grandmother Dieu Lan had six children with her husband Hung. During World War II, Dieu Lan saw her father get killed by Japanese soldiers. Later in 1945 there was a great famine and because the Japanese had taken all the villagers' food stores people were starving to death. Dieu Lan and her mother went to the forest to search for food. They found a field of corn and took some ears but the farmer the corn belonged to found them and whipped them, killing Dieu Lan's mother. In 1955 Dieu Lan's husband was poisoned by the Viet Minh because he espoused democratic ideas. Dieu Lan and her brother Cong had been managing the Tran family land and were quite successful. When Land Reform was promulgated by the Communist authorities they were targeted. Cong and Dieu Lan's oldest son, Minh, were arrested while Dieu Lan and her children were held in their home. During the night Cong was killed but Minh was freed by people who had been treated well by the Trans. That same night Dieu Lan and her remaining five children fled from the village. Ngoc was 15 years old and the others ranged in age down to the baby Sang who was only a year old. Dieu Lan headed for Ha Noi hoping that she would encounter Minh along the way. It was a perilous journey and one by one the children had to be left behind with people who would care for them. Only Sang made it to Ha Noi with Dieu Lan. Eventually Dieu Lan was able to reunite with all her children except Minh. Dieu Lan worked hard and also studied to become a teacher which is what she was doing when the reader first encounters her. Soon she decides that she can only provide for herself and Huong by becoming a trader on the black market. Being a trader went against the Communist ideals and Dieu Lan and Huong were ostracized by their neighbours. Dieu Lan persisted though and when the war ended and her children started trickling back home she had a place for them to live and food for them to eat. Ngoc was the first one to return home but she was badly traumatized by the war. Thuan had been killed during the war, Dat had lost both his legs when a land mine exploded, while Sang was physically okay but turned against his mother for continuing to be a trader. Huong's father never returned but he had met Dat during the war and gave him a Son ca bird that he had carved to give to Huong. Son ca means "The Mountains Sing". There was still no word from or about Minh. It was thought that he had perhaps made his way to the south before the war.

Family and ancestors mean a great deal to Dieu Lan. She is an incredibly strong woman but she grieves for those she has lost and even for those who are still alive but who have grown emotionally distant. Huong contemplates her grandmother's burdens on page 299:
"My chest hurt for Grandma. How could she cope with such awful news?...Human lives were short and fragile. Time and illnesses consumed us, like flames burning away...pieces of wood. But it didn't matter how long or short we lived. It mattered more how much light we were able to shed on those we loved and how many people we touched with our compassion."
Such a wise philosophy. show less