Vietnam

The Mountains Sing

A Winner of the 2020 Lannan Literary Awards Fellowship, a NY Times Editors’ Choice Selection, & a finalist of the Audie 2021 Best Audiobook of the Year

With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War.

Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family.

Vivid, gripping, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves, while showing us the true power of kindness.

“Balances the unrelenting devastation of war with redemptive moments of surprising humanity.” —Booklist

“Lyrical and at once heart-wrenching and hopeful.” —NPR

“Epic in scope, and a celebration of the human spirit, The Mountains Sing is a story you won't soon forget.” —PopSugar

“A poignant and vivid portrayal of a brutal slice of Vietnamese history from a perspective that is so rarely heard abroad: that of the Vietnamese themselves. We are starkly reminded of how those wars—and wars everywhere—wash over and drown both the guilty and innocent alike.” —Baingana

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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Last Night I Dreamed of Peace

Rich in detail, this posthumously published diary of a twenty-seven-year-old Vietcong woman doctor gives us fresh insight into the lives of those fighting on the other side of the Vietnam War.

Saved from destruction by an American soldier and then published in Vietnam 35 years later, Trâm’s wartime diaries chronicle the last two years of her life as an idealistic young North Vietnamese battlefield surgeon. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is a story of the struggle for one’s ideals amid the despair and grief of war, but most of all, it is a story of hope in the most dire circumstances.

”Urgent, simple prose that pierces the heart.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Remarkable. . . A gift from a heroine who was killed at 27, but whose voice has survived to remind us of the humanity and decency that endure amid—and despite—the horror and chaos of war.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

“Faithfully translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnamese American journalist Pham, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is witness to the tragedy of war, a reminder made more pertinent every day. A book of hope to be read by all.” —The Bloombury Review

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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No Mud, No Lotus

The author, Thích Nhất Hạnh, is one of the most famous Zen Buddhist Masters in the world credited with popularizing “mindfulness” in the West after being exiled from his native Vietnam because of his peace efforts during the war.

No Mud, No Lotus remembers the ancient wisdom that we grow into our own enlightenment out of adversity like the beautiful lotus flowers that only live in the deep muck of muddy swamps—without mud, there is no lotus.

With his signature clarity and sense of joy, Hanh offers practices and inspiration to help us acknowledge our struggles and transform suffering to find true happiness.

“I, like many of you, have endured much suffering during the pandemic. But I am grateful for Hanh’s wisdom. No Mud, No Lotus has provided me so much support—both when it was first published a number of years ago and, more recently, throughout this challenging time.” —Mind Over

“As Thich Nhat Hanh nears the end of his most inspiring life, he has no time left to expound on tangents. This book cuts to the core—fast. With so much wisdom condensed in this small book, this is the most potent and practical guide I have ever read.” —Jack Sherman

“Serene and wise, No Mud, No Lotus is an immensely practical guide to overcoming life’s big and little problems.” —Namrata

(Group read suggestion from Beth McCrea, book club co-founder.)

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The Sorrow of War

The daring and controversial novel that took the world by storm—a story of politics, selfhood, survival, and war.

Heart-wrenching, fragmented, raw, former Vietcong soldier Bao Ninh’s The Sorrow of War provides a strikingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed everything.

In this novel of North Vietnam, Kien, a lone survivor from the Glorious 27th Youth brigade of the Vietcong, revisits the haunting sites of battles and relives a parade of horrors, as he grapples with his ghosts, his alcoholism and attempts to arrange his life in writing.

Published against government wishes in Vietnam because of its nonheroic, non-ideological tone, this now classic work has won worldwide acclaim and become an international bestseller.

“Vaults over all the American fiction that came out of the Vietnam War to take its place alongside the greatest war novel, All Quiet on the Western Front. This is to understate its qualities, for, unlike All Quiet, it is about much more than war. A book about writing, about lost youth, it is also a beautiful, agonizing love story.” —The Independent

“Dramatic . . . Chronicle[s] the wrecked lives of North Vietnamese soldiers who enter the war with blazing idealism, only to sink deeper into disillusionment and pessimism as everything they know falls apart around them.” —The Washington Post

“Powerful . . . A remarkable emotional intensity builds as the author mixes harrowing flashback scenes from the war with images from his pastoral youth, from his heartbreaking homecoming after a decade away, and finally from the nightmare calamity that gives the book its tragic power.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

(A special thank you to book club member, Eydis West for the suggestion.)

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The Unwanted

Saigon fell to the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975. Kien Nguyen watched the last U.S. Army helicopter leave without him, without his brother, without his mother, without his grandparents. Left to a nightmarish existence in a violated and decimated country, Kien was more at risk than most because of his odd blond hair and his light eyes—because he was Amerasian.

He was the most unwanted.

Told with stark and poetic brilliance, this is a story of survival and hope, a moving and personal record of a tumultuous and important piece of history. The Unwanted is the only memoir by an Amerasian who stayed behind in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon and who is now living in America.

“A remarkable tale of survival at all costs.” —People

“The son of a wealthy Vietnamese woman and an American businessman, Nguyen was nearly eight when Saigon fell to the Vietcong. For the next decade, he and his family endured hardships brought on by the privileged lives they had previously enjoyed. Nguyen is adept at capturing both the broad sweep of life under the Vietcong and the peculiarities of growing up in a colorful and emotionally dysfunctional family during a jarring and vicious revolution. But perhaps the most engaging aspect of his memoir is its portrayal of the ironies that ensue when the old order collapses and the social hierarchy is turned upside down.” —Publisher’s Weekly

Trigger warning: Rape, sexual violence, & the killing of a dog.

(A special thank you to book club member, Beth Cummings for the suggestion.)

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Wild Mustard

Wild Mustard, an anthology of prizewinning short fiction by contemporary Vietnamese writers, captures the kaleidoscopic experiences of modern Vietnam's youth, navigating between home and newly expanded horizons, as they seek new opportunities through migration, education, and integration not only into their nation but into the world.

Following the tradition of the “Under 40” collections popularized by magazines such as the New Yorker and Granta, but with greater stakes and greater differences between the previous generation of writers and this new one, Wild Mustard seeks to change how North American readers think of Vietnam. Escaping the common fixation on the Vietnam War and its aftermath, these stories reflect the movement and dynamism of the young Vietnamese who find themselves in a vibrant world.

“This beautiful collection of short stories introduces a new side of Vietnam that pulls it out of the historical prison of the Vietnam War, where it’s been trapped for the last forty years. While the stories are specific to Vietnam, they are written in such a way that Anglophone readers of this translation can relate to, which makes them so relevant and important.” —Firpo

“The first anthology to focus on Vietnamese writers born after the Vietnam War, Wild Mustard makes you realize that whatever you thought you knew about Vietnam and its literature is woefully out of date. This is an important collection, one that shows Vietnamese fiction to be not only vibrant and alive, but also a very different creature than what you thought it was.” —Brian Evenson, noted author

(Group read suggestion from Julie Jacobs, book club moderator.)

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The Secret of Hoa Sen

Winner of the Poetry of the Year Award from the Hanoi Writers Association

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is among the most exciting writers to emerge from post-war Vietnam. The Secret of Hoa Sen shines with craft, art, and deeply felt humanity. These penetrating poems, published in bilingual English and Vietnamese, build new bridges between two cultures bound together by war and destruction.

“Born in 1973 in Vietnam’s north but raised in the south’s lush delta, award-winning poet Nguyễn writes precise, vibrant poems that give voice to her country’s present, grounded in tradition and dark history.” —Library Journal

“Nguyễn writes eloquently about family, femaleness and the sensual beauty of her country. When she writes of place, I feel that I am walking past the rice shoots in a long ago world.” —Omaha World-Herald

“Nguyễn's poetic attention is diverse and wide in scope, but never far from her country and family... one cannot help but feel that each poem is written into the Vietnamese landscape of the poet’s imagination. Not carved, but delicately inscribed; so as to preserve the beauty of a country whose wounds must not define it.” —Poetry International

“My Mother’s Rice

Through the eyes of my childhood I watch my mother,
who labored in a kitchen built from straw and mud.
She lifted a pair of chopsticks and twirled sunlight into a pot of boiling rice,
the perfume of a new harvest
soaked her worn shirt as she bent and fed rice straws to the hungry flames.
I wanted to come and help, but the child in me
pulled myself into a dark corner
where I could watch my mother’s face
teach beauty how to glow in hardship,
and how to sing the rice to cook with her sunbaked hands.

That day in our kitchen
I saw how perfection was arranged
by soot-blackened pans and pots,
and by the bend back of my mother, so thin
she would disappear if I wept, or cried out.”