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A review by shelfexplanatory
Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen
5.0
THINGS WE LOST TO THE WATER by Eric Nguyen is hands down my favorite read of 2021 so far. The novel starts when a Vietnamese mother named Hương arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, Tuấn and Bình. Having escaped Vietnam shortly after the fall of Saigon, Hương must navigate New Orleans as a single mother after unwittingly leaving her husband Công behind in Vietnam.
Spanning almost 30 years, we follow the family's lives as they try to assimilate and come to terms with Công's absence. I thought Nguyen did an excellent job of making each character feel like a real person with a voice unique from the others - and I definitely want to emphasize that this novel is very much a character study rather than a plot-driven story.
These characters are not perfect. Hương loves her sons, but doesn't understand the othering that they face, having not grown up as an immigrant within the American school system herself. As a result, her uncompromising parenting style only ends up pushing them away and causing them to resent her.
Tuấn and Bình, in turn, find themselves seeking acceptance elsewhere. Tuấn is vehemently proud of his heritage and takes up with a local Vietnamese gang. Meanwhile, Bình changes his name to Ben and explores his newfound queer identity while also hiding it his family.
What I really appreciate about this book is that yes, it is a story about Vietnamese boat people, but the vast span of experiences within this one family shows how different these stories are. There is no single, all encompassing narrative for Vietnamese-Americans. With these characters alone, we have a 1st gen (Hương, coming to the US as an adult), 1.5 gen (Tuấn, childhood in Vietnam but adolescence in US), and 2nd gen (Ben, born and raised in the US). And even these characters are very unique to the time and circumstances that they live in, and are not representative of all people within that generation.
Finally, as the title suggests, the motif of water is pervasive in this novel. The narrative is reminiscent of sifting through years of memories: pivotal moments coming in and out of focus, at times gradually swelling like a tide, at other times rushing in like a flood. Nguyen beautifully depicts how, like water, these moments can cause families to be forced apart and made to collide together again.
I absolutely recommend this book to fans of Ocean Vuong's ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS. I read these back to back and felt like there were a lot of similar themes of Vietnamese-American immigrant experience, gay identity, and tumultuous mother/son relationships.
Spanning almost 30 years, we follow the family's lives as they try to assimilate and come to terms with Công's absence. I thought Nguyen did an excellent job of making each character feel like a real person with a voice unique from the others - and I definitely want to emphasize that this novel is very much a character study rather than a plot-driven story.
These characters are not perfect. Hương loves her sons, but doesn't understand the othering that they face, having not grown up as an immigrant within the American school system herself. As a result, her uncompromising parenting style only ends up pushing them away and causing them to resent her.
Tuấn and Bình, in turn, find themselves seeking acceptance elsewhere. Tuấn is vehemently proud of his heritage and takes up with a local Vietnamese gang. Meanwhile, Bình changes his name to Ben and explores his newfound queer identity while also hiding it his family.
What I really appreciate about this book is that yes, it is a story about Vietnamese boat people, but the vast span of experiences within this one family shows how different these stories are. There is no single, all encompassing narrative for Vietnamese-Americans. With these characters alone, we have a 1st gen (Hương, coming to the US as an adult), 1.5 gen (Tuấn, childhood in Vietnam but adolescence in US), and 2nd gen (Ben, born and raised in the US). And even these characters are very unique to the time and circumstances that they live in, and are not representative of all people within that generation.
Finally, as the title suggests, the motif of water is pervasive in this novel. The narrative is reminiscent of sifting through years of memories: pivotal moments coming in and out of focus, at times gradually swelling like a tide, at other times rushing in like a flood. Nguyen beautifully depicts how, like water, these moments can cause families to be forced apart and made to collide together again.
I absolutely recommend this book to fans of Ocean Vuong's ON EARTH WE'RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS. I read these back to back and felt like there were a lot of similar themes of Vietnamese-American immigrant experience, gay identity, and tumultuous mother/son relationships.