Women bore much of the burden of the Vietnam War, but their voices have long been absent from the trove of literature on the topic, author Nguyen Phan Que Mai says.
Speaking ahead of yesterday’s 45th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Que Mai says her new novel The Mountains Sing — written in English — aims to shine a light on the stories of women who not only endured and survived conflict, but had to rebuild shattered lives time and again.
“I’ve read a lot of Vietnam War fiction in English and most of it is written in the voices of men,” the poet and writer said.
“I grew up with incredible women around me,” she said, adding that while many sons and fathers lost their lives in combat, it was women who had to deal with the heartache and the consequences.
“My childhood was full of images of women who were waiting for the return of their loved ones from the war. My village was basically empty of men and the women later had to carry on, had to raise the kids and survive,” she said.
The Mountains Sing is written from the perspective of a Vietnamese grandmother and her granddaughter. It tells the story of four generations of their family through much of the 20th century, spanning the French colonial period, the rise of communism, the war with the US, to present day.
Novels such as The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien and Graham Greene’s The Quiet American have become classics, but offer few details of the female experience, while Vietnam’s most celebrated novels on the topic, Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winner The Sympathizer and Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War were written by men.
Que Mai wanted to take a fresh approach.
“I wanted to show the Vietnam War and Vietnamese history from another angle, from the angle of Vietnamese women,” she said. “I could see that women are the people who bear the burden of the war.”
She believes it is vital to help people see there is more to the nation than the war, hailing it as a place full of complexity, colors and culture.
Born in 1973, Que Mai spent most of her childhood in the south in the post-war years after her father, a teacher, was relocated from the north.
They moved to the tip of the Mekong Delta in 1979, where the land was lush and fertile, but bullet shells had to be removed to plant rice, she said.
Like many people at the time in Vietnam — which was under a US embargo — they were dirt poor and her family rarely had enough to eat.
She rose every day at 4:30am to catch shrimps in nearby rice fields, before heading to school. After class, she would sell water spinach and cigarettes on the street.
Despite reunification on April 30, 1975, division between the north and south was as tangible as ever, she said, recounting a terrifying first night in her new home.
“I was eating dinner and I heard a ‘boom’ — someone had thrown a rock at our house,” Que Mai said. “The southern people considered us invaders.”
Four decades on, many of those old wounds have yet to be healed. For those who fought in the brutal conflict with the US and for the family members left behind, there is still unresolved trauma, she said.
“I have a friend who fought in the war and he cannot sleep with a ceiling fan in the room, because he still thinks of American helicopters chasing and shooting him, and for many people the war still hasn’t ended because their loved ones haven’t returned home,” Que Mai said.
He used to preside over Latin America’s largest country and its 214 million people. Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro now lives in a small Florida town and eats alone in a fast-food restaurant. Bolsonaro, 67, has found an unusual refuge in the US, where he arrived in late December last year, several days before his supporters stormed government buildings in Brasilia in an attempt to overturn the election victory of his rival, Brazilain President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. At home, Bolsonaro is being investigated over his alleged involvement in the unrest, which he denies. From the lavish presidential palace, Bolsonaro, a political
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) yesterday unveiled a promotion campaign that would include 500,000 free flights to lure back visitors, businesses and investors to the financial hub after more than three years of tough COVID-19 curbs. The “Hello Hong Kong” campaign was launched with dancers and flashing neon lights in the territory’s main convention center, next to its famous harbor, with a backdrop bearing the slogan in various languages including Russian and Spanish. Lee, speaking in English, said the campaign would show that the territory was open for tourism, and was aimed at boosting business and investment in the Chinese
There could be some relief to 150,000 commuters who endure hours-long waits to cross the road border between Malaysia and Singapore, Malaysian newspaper The Star reported. The Malaysian government has proposed a “single clearance system” to ease traffic along the Johor-Singapore Causeway, the report said. Such waits often require cross-border workers on the Malaysian side to wake up as early as 4am to get to work on time in Singapore. The proposal, still in its initial stages, would involve Malaysian immigration officials being stationed on the Singapore side of the causeway, with Singaporean officials stationed on the Malaysian side, in the southern
‘HONOR KILLING’: These ‘horrific murders’ are likely to continue unless the Iraqi authorities adopt robust legislation to protect women and girls, a rights group said The death of a young YouTube star at the hands of her father has sparked outrage in Iraq, where so-called “honor killings” continue to take place in the conservative country. Tiba al-Ali, 22, was killed by her father on Tuesday last week in the southern province of Diwaniya, Iraqi Ministry of Interior spokesman Saad Maan wrote on Twitter on Friday. Police had attempted to mediate between Ali — who resided in Turkey and was visiting Iraq — and her relatives to “resolve the family dispute in a definitive manner,” Maan said. Unverified recordings of conversations between Ali and her father appeared to indicate