“The Mountains Sing is an epic account of Vietnam’s painful 20th century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling. Through the travails of one family, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai brings us close to the horrors of famine, war, and class struggle. But in this moving and riveting novel, she also shows us a postwar Vietnam, a country of hope and renewal, home to a people who have never given up.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize
“A sweeping story that positions Vietnamese life within the rich and luminous history of national epics like The Tale of Kieu and the Iliad. Expansive in scope and feeling, The Mountains Sing is a feat of hope, an unflinchingly felt inquiry into the past, with the courageous storytelling of the present.”—Ocean Vuong, 2019 MacArthur Fellow and author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Description
My grandmother used to tell me that when our ancestors die, they don’t disappear, they continue to watch over us. And now, I feel her watching me as I light a match, setting fire to three sticks of incense….
Forced to flee their farm during the Communist Land Reform, the Trần family is thrust into the upheaval of a civil war that will change not only the fabric of their nation but of their very family. This story of four generations, which begins with the American bombing of Hà Nội in 1972 and then moves backward and forward in time, is told through the indelible voices of the family matriarch, Trần Diệu Lan, and her granddaughter Hương. As Hương comes of age, her family’s story underscores both the cost of armed conflict and the resilience of the human spirit.
Steeped in the storytelling traditions of Việt Nam, THE MOUNTAINS SING welcomes readers into a lush and vibrant, if unfamiliar, world. Quế Mai says the novel is her attempt to respond to Hollywood movies and novels written by Westerners who continue to see her country only as a place of war, and Vietnamese people as mostly silent extras, portrayed as simple, naïve, cruel, or opportunistic. While she set aside her childhood dreams of being a writer for many years in order to earn a living and support her family, Quế Mai found the writer within “always listened to other people in secret, asked what they had gone through and memorized their stories. In my teenage years, I began to travel to the villages of my parents to talk to the elderly, to be able to imagine how life had been for my grandparents, who had either died or been killed. Gradually, thanks to my understanding of Việt Nam’s painful past, my parents and their friends started to share with me the events of their lives. Unknown to me, I was carrying out my real-life research for THE MOUNTAINS SING.”
Born into the Viet Nam War in 1973, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai grew up witnessing the war’s devastation and its aftermath. She worked as a street vendor and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia.
She is the author of eight books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese, and her writing has been translated and published in more than 10 countries, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology.
She has been honored with many awards, including the Poetry of the Year 2010 Award from the Hà Nội Writers Association, as well as international grants and fellowships. Quế Mai first learned English in 8th grade and The Mountains Sing is the first novel written in English by a Vietnamese national to be published by a major American publisher. Currently based in Indonesia, Quế Mai’s journalism regularly appears in major Vietnamese newspapers. For more information, visit www.nguyenphanquemai.com.
Ed. Note. Boston City Paper chose to publish information about this book because our City is about to get the news that the Fields Corner area of Dorchester will soon be officially designated as “Little Saigon” in recognition of the important role of the Vietnamese emigrant community which started to develop in 1974 and is today such a vibrant segment of the Dorchester/Boston community with so many homeowners, business owners, restaurants and markets, hair dressers and professionals such as Doctors, Dentists, Chiropractors, Lawyers, Accountants and their children having thrived and succeeded in Boston’s public, private and Catholic schools.
Collectively, they have played a major role in turning around the negative image of Dorchester as a place to live and raise a family where today many neighborhoods of Dorchester are considered highly desirable places to live and raise families for people of all ethnic backgrounds. I remember going as far back as the 1960’s when Fields Corner was the home of the Blarney Stone Bar and it was said that the first stop after Logan Airport for many Irish emigrants was a visit to the Blarney Stone. The Blarney Stone is still there but all around it has changed for the good, thanks to the contributions of the Vietnamese.
