NOTE FROM UYEN NICOLE DUONG: I came across this review online and would like to share this with you. I am moved by the insightful and encouraging comments by readers on amazon.com about my literary works. They keep me writing on...This reviewer understands and describes the scenes and details rarely spoken of by others in the public domain: the unknown African American soldier who donated blood during the Vietnam War, and the scene at the hospital Tu Du, where the narrator, young Mimi, first learned the hardship and sorrow of poor Vietnamese women giving birth in an urban public hospital, in the middle of a guerrilla war that took place primarily in the countryside... I am grateful to Ann Hite, who wrote this review and posted it for the net community. By reprinting it here, I would like to acknowledge how important her review is to me, by sharing her comments with other readers and particularly Vietnamese readers (see my Vietnamese note below). She compared my novella to music, my great love in life, and recognized the importance of short fiction in our modern a world where, sadly, we are forced to witness the decline of the popularity of the literary art.
Tôi rất vui mừng chia xẻ với bạn đọc tiếng Việt bài phân tích và phê bình dưới đây của một độc giả Mỹ, bà Ann Hite, đã chú ý và nói lên những chi tiết và "scene" mà tác giả rất chú trọng trong cuốn truyện nhỏ, Bưu Thiếp Của Nam (đa số độc giả không nhắc đến những chi tiết này). Tôi không hề biết bà và nhà xuất bản cũng không hề yêu cầu bà phê bình. Bài phê bình này rất ngắn và gọn nhưng vô cùng xúc tích, đầy đủ dẫn chứng khi cần thiết, đã cho thấy tầm ảnh hưởng nhỏ nhoi, nhưng được cảm nhận của việc tôi làm trong lòng quần chúng Mỹ. Tôi trân trọng cám ơn những trái tim và khối óc đã hiểu tôi và những gì tôi muốn nói...Bà Hite cũng đã nhắc đến một điều quan trọng trong nghệ thuật văn chương và tiểu thuyết: "Tiểu thuyết ngắn rất cảm động này cho chúng ta thấy tầm quan trọng của nghệ thuật viết truyện ngắn trong thế giới văn chương."
Postcards from Nam
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Releasing the music of language
Postcards from Nam
By Uyen Nicole Duong
Amazon Encore
Reviewed by Ann Hite
Postcards from Nam is a stirring, haunting book. Mimi is a Vietnamese refugee who at the age of twelve escapes the fall of Saigon in April of 1975 by securing a place on one of the overcrowded American transport planes. Her father secures the family's passage to the United States from their refugee camp in Thailand. Over the years in her new life, Mimi sheds her Vietnamese name and childhood memories. She is the poster child for living the American dream and grows up to attend Harvard Law School.
Then the postcards arrive one at a time: handmade paper with intricate drawings, both disturbing and beautiful at the same time. Always they are postmarked Bangkok and signed Nam. Mimi begins her quest to discover who Nam is and what he wants from her.
In one of Mimi's childhood memories, we see her only a year or so before the fall of Saigon. She stands in the public hospital--not a place her family is accustomed to--waiting to hear of her mother's condition after a terrible miscarriage. Women are lined up on the floor in different stages of labor. Ms. Duong takes readers into the emergency room where they can smell the scent of birth, feel the heat of the bodies, and see the pain on the faces of the women.
Finally the news comes that Mimi's mother will survive with a blood transfusion. The blood--a rare type of her country--is donated by an African American soldier. Mimi's grandmother begins a campaign to discover his identity:
My grandmother kept on asking. She wanted the soldier's identity even if he had died. She would keep his name, age, and hometown on the family's altar and burn an incense stick for him every day. The medical interns did not take her seriously. What was wrong with this country, she complained. So much had happened in the war people had forgotten the importance of gratitude.
Postcards from Nam not only takes the reader into Saigon's war years, but just as importantly deals with the survivors and their memories. The author gives us a looking glass through which to view the culture then and now. The beauty and violence becomes a metaphor for the stories that insist on being told as if they have lives of their own.
This moving novella is proof of how important short fiction is to our literary world. I strongly recommend readers to purchase this book and release the music of this language into the world.
Best,