RETURN TO HER ROOTS
Fiction
DAUGHTERS OF THE RIVER HUONG:
Stories of a Vietnamese Concubine and Her Descendants
By Uyen Nicole Duong
269 pp. Amazon Encore
Reviewed by Kathy Highcove
DAUGHTERS OF THE RIVER HUONG:
Stories of a Vietnamese Concubine and Her Descendants
By Uyen Nicole Duong
269 pp. Amazon Encore
Reviewed by Kathy Highcove
This book begins-and ends-in 1994 with the story of Simone Mi Uyen
Sanders, a Vietnamese-American naturalized citizen. America has been good to
Simone. She's a wealthy lawyer with a prestigious firm and resides in a big New
Jersey house with her American husband and her immigrant mother. But something
vital is missing from her life. Suddenly she must return to her roots and
search for the missing piece. She tries to explain her malaise to her puzzled
husband:
I bear in
me the collective subconscious of an extinct culture, with all its tragedy,
which could trace back thousands of years, and that's why I am never truly
happy, although I have all the reasons in the world to be happy...
Simone is one of the Vietnamese who took the last flight from
Saigon on a chaotic April afternoon in 1975. Young Simone, certain she'll reap
North Vietnamese retribution because of her family's royal ancestry,
efficiently seduces Christopher, an American news correspondent, in his office.
And voilà! Simone evacuates with other Vietnamese dependents on a US military
helicopter. Once safe in America, she dutifully marries Christopher and begins
her life in exile.
Survival in exile is a family tradition. Simone's matriarchal
ancestors-great-grandmother, grandmother, great aunt and mother-also used their
beauty and street smarts to survive in times of political turmoil. And each of
these women suffered in exile when separated from their Champa homeland. This
novel effectively relates a four-part familial history.
The author, Uyen Nicole Duong, deftly moves her story from a 1994
New Jersey suburb back in time to an 1885 Vietnamese river community (the
extinct Champa Kingdom). Several chapters focus on Simone's ancestor: an orphan
paddle girl named Huyen Phi. Her water taxi roams the Perfume River of Hue,
transporting her paying passengers. Huyen is a darkly beautiful Cham woman, who
thrives like a tropical bloom in her rain forest environment. She sings the
songs and stories of her people as she paddles along and becomes a favorite
oarswoman with locals and regular travelers.
One day, a handsome young traveler, the disguised Thuan Thanh,
King of Annam, takes a seat in her canoe. He is immediately intrigued by the
beautiful paddle girl, who is not that impressed with him. She thinks he's
inventing stories about his royal status, and he's probably just another male
flirt. Thanh's not used to a young woman's indifference; so predictably, he
becomes fixated on Huyen and decides to add her to his harem. Not long after
his second visit, royal musicians and house guards take up positions along the
river-all the way to the palace. The surprised Huyen Phi soon finds herself the
newest concubine of King Thanh.
For a while Huyen Phi appears to be the King's favorite concubine.
Inevitably, the young king finds new interests and new women. But he
simultaneously tries to preserve his kingdom while he begrudgingly accommodates
aggressive French colonists. Soon Thanh no longer makes nightly visits to
Huyen's apartments. The once free and extroverted woman of the river sits by
herself, night after night, with only her servants and old eunuch for company.
Eventually, Huyen Phi conceives twins. The court soothsayers predict sons.
Unfortunately, she delivers not the expected heirs, but twin girls! A double
blow to King Thanh. While Huyen Phi is caught up with caring for her babies, her
mate truly becomes a virtual prisoner of the French invaders. He can't find a
way to satisfy the bullying demands of the French colonial minister, Résident
Supérieur, Syvain Foucalt.
The King, depressed and defeated, returns to Huyen Phi's apartment
for one last conjugal visit with his favorite concubine before his own exile.
In that visit, Huyen conceives a son, who will be known as Prince Forest.
After the King's banishment, Foucalt comes uninvited to the harem
and the apartment of the renowned Huyen Chi - the Mystique Concubine. However,
Huyen is not accommodating like the rest of the court and harem populace. She
stubbornly resists Foucault's efforts to photograph her for Paris newspapers.
Huyen will not be a trophy for the Frenchman. An angry Foucalt “frees” the
concubines and children of the king. For most of the wives, their new freedom
is cruel punishment. They have few resources. But Huyen Phi, the former paddle
girl, finds that the cage door is finally open. She sees an opportunity to be
independent and live close to the Perfume River once more.
The Mystique Concubine moves her few servants and her twin
daughters, Cinnamon and Ginseng, to live in a village with a prosperous silk
worm industry. Huyen takes to her new life and builds up a home silk business
that supports her household. There, in her village home, she gives birth to
Prince Forest.
Huyen Phi's daughters, when grown, choose very different courses in
life. One daughter, Cinnamon, stays in the silk worm village and manages the
family's estate. The other daughter, rebellious Ginseng, joins the Vietnamese
Revolutionary forces. Her form of exile begins in prison. Cruel imprisonment
takes away both her beauty and her sanity. Ginseng's a heroine to the people,
but mental illness cuts connections to her home and family.
Cinnamon's daughter Dew, the third generation, tries to fashion a
comfortable life as wife to a professor nicknamed Hope. She gives birth to
three children: Simone, Mimi and Pierre. Dew loves her lush gardens, the
village, her home and tries to stay in her natural element, just as the paddle
girl tried to stay with her river. But like her grandmother, Dew is forced to
leave. Her husband, hopeful of a better job in the South, moves his family into
a small dark house in Saigon. The granddaughter of a royal princess has only a
tiny garden and a meager lifestyle in her southern exile.
The story of Simone, daughter of Dew, resumes in the last chapters
of this book. She is attracted to a young Frenchman, André Foucalt, the
descendant of Sylvain Foucalt. This section of the book is also his story.
André has been told of the Mystique Concubine and the King's court by his
grandfather Sylvain. The handsome young man travels to Saigon, finds the family
and strikes up a friendship with Professor Hope.
Simone meets the much older André while she is still a child. The
unlikely pair continues to meet off and on, in Saigon and Paris, as Simone
grows into a beautiful teenaged girl. Simone and André's lives commingle in
surprising ways. And yet, Simone suspects that she must find a way to
disentangle from the Western influences that keep her mentally and emotionally
in exile. She tries to prepare her husband for her inevitable departure.
Simone returns to her family's ruined estate and looks for true
release from her emotional banishment. The dishevelment of the once rich
countryside startles her. As she views the Vietnamese people's poverty, she
tries to summon the courage and strong spirit of her great-grandmother, the
orphan paddle girl. Will she find the way to reconnect with her family's roots?
Will Simone be able to satisfy the restless spirits who haunt her dreams?
Most of us only know Vietnam through the eyes of young soldiers and war correspondents during the disastrous Vietnam War. I was engrossed by the saga of Simone's family history. The author is a natural storyteller who has long wanted to tell this story. And she succeeds in effectively presenting her country's culture and history, and the lives of Vietnamese women, to this Western reader.
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