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A review by littlestbookstore
The Mountains Sing by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
5.0
I think about one-third of the way through I started feeling like I was constantly on the brink of tears. I did end up crying at certain points and it felt like my heart was slowly being ripped into pieces as I read. So be warned that this is not to be read if you need to feel uplifted.
I feel like a recurring line I see often in literature about the various was in Asia (especially the Vietnamese War), is the best we could do. And it rings so true. War isn't about being able to smooth things out, or even being able to turn open wounds into healed scars. But this book beautifully explores what Thi Bui also wrote about in her own memoir: we inherit pain in order to process it, and eventually, we can be freed.
I'm so glad that books like this one exist. Too often, the Vietnam War is viewed through Western (American) eyes, focusing on the massive American casualties and the anti-war narratives are mostly bloodless and conceptual. There need to be more books that reclaim the narrative and depict the horror in the way that is true to history. I don't want to draw callous parallels to the Jewish Holocaust, which is entirely different in nature (indescribably horrific stystematic / chaotic senselessness), but there came an emergence of voices that wrote about about it. Elie Wiesel's work is crucial, for instance; as is some of Affinity Konar's novel, and other nonfiction including Anne Frank's Diary.
I hope that Asian writers will follow suit and also shed light on the human atrocities and violence committed in the Vietnam War and the Korean War (and greater crimes committed in many different nations in South Asia-Pacific). They need to canonized. This book, I think, should be an essential part of that.
I feel like a recurring line I see often in literature about the various was in Asia (especially the Vietnamese War), is the best we could do. And it rings so true. War isn't about being able to smooth things out, or even being able to turn open wounds into healed scars. But this book beautifully explores what Thi Bui also wrote about in her own memoir: we inherit pain in order to process it, and eventually, we can be freed.
I'm so glad that books like this one exist. Too often, the Vietnam War is viewed through Western (American) eyes, focusing on the massive American casualties and the anti-war narratives are mostly bloodless and conceptual. There need to be more books that reclaim the narrative and depict the horror in the way that is true to history. I don't want to draw callous parallels to the Jewish Holocaust, which is entirely different in nature (indescribably horrific stystematic / chaotic senselessness), but there came an emergence of voices that wrote about about it. Elie Wiesel's work is crucial, for instance; as is some of Affinity Konar's novel, and other nonfiction including Anne Frank's Diary.
I hope that Asian writers will follow suit and also shed light on the human atrocities and violence committed in the Vietnam War and the Korean War (and greater crimes committed in many different nations in South Asia-Pacific). They need to canonized. This book, I think, should be an essential part of that.