Climbing Many Mountains:  An essay by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai‘s THE MOUNTAINS SING—starred, recommended, and celebrated in virtually all of the big book reviews and magazines, from Kirkus to O to the NY Times—is out today! 

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 not just her beloved country, but her family apart.

Climbing Many Mountains  An essay by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai

In 1983, when I was ten years old, I went secretly to the post office in my hometown to mail a letter to Hà Nội. The letter contained my entry for a writing competition. When a notice arrived announcing that I had won a prize, my parents were shocked. Due to the long history of Vietnamese writers’ experiences in my country, my parents reminded me of their wish that their only daughter would not become a writer. 

And then I had to put aside my dreams of writing to do a variety of jobs to earn a living and to help support my family. But the writer in me always listened to other people, always asked questions about their experiences during the war, memorizing their stories. In my teenage years, I began to travel to my parents’ villages to talk with our elder relatives and family friends so I could imagine how life had been for my grandparents, who had either died or been killed before I was born. Gradually, the more I began to understand Việt Nam’s painful past, the more people shared with me the events of their lives.  

Unbeknownst to me, at that young age I was already carrying out the research for The Mountains Sing. It was only with time and distance and my ongoing academic research that I could comprehend the complexity of Việt Nam’s history and its relations to other nations. My extensive exchanges with Vietnamese and American combat veterans, as well as volunteer work with victims of the war has expanded this understanding. 

The Mountains Sing embodies my yearning to know my grandmothers, and to bring to life the under-represented women and children who often suffer the consequences of wars the most but must hide their sorrows to become pillars of strength and comfort for returning soldiers. Through Grandma Diệu Lan and her grand-daughter Hương in the novel, I could talk to them, trace their footsteps, and imagine their dreams and hopes. 

When I first learned English in eighth grade, I didn’t know that one day it would be the language that would save The Mountains Sing. Khương Dụ, the small Northern village where I was born, did not have an English teacher. Bạc Liêu, the Southern town where I grew up, didn’t have many people who could speak English. For me, a student who also worked as a rice farmer and street vendor, the Western world was mysterious, only existing in the black and white movies I would occasionally catch a glimpse of while selling cigarettes in the town’s cemetery which also served as our only open-air movie theatre.

I didn’t know any English words until well into secondary school, when one afternoon, my eldest brother brought home a notebook. He told me he had just learned English from someone and would teach me. I was so excited I could barely swallow dinner. That night, after I had lit the oil lamp (we only had electricity occasionally) and put on long pants and a long-sleeved shirt to ward off the zillions of mosquitoes, my brother solemnly brought out his notebook. He opened the first page and pointed at a strange-looking word. “Sờ cu lờ,” he said, and then looked at me, expecting me to repeat after him. 

“Sờ…sờ…,” I said, and brought my hand to my mouth.

“Sờ cu lờ,” he said again.

“Sờ…sờ cu…” I repeated and burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it! The words that had just escaped my mouth sounded like the Vietnamese phrase for “to touch a male’s genitals.”

So ended my first English lesson. Because I hadn’t been able to stop laughing, my brother slapped his notebook shut and stormed out of the room. His face was as red as a gấc fruit.

“Brother! Teach me, please,” I called after him, but he didn’t turn back.

Later, much later, I found out my brother was trying to teach me a very important word: school.

I didn’t dare ask him to teach me again, but occasionally I would steal his notebook when he was gone, hide under the mango and coconut trees that circled our fish pond, and stare at the English words. I sensed that behind those strange-looking words existed some magic doors, and if I managed to push them open, I would be able to enter the big, wide world.

And now, with The Mountains Sing, I am taking my baby steps into that big, wide world. It took me seven years to write and edit, hundreds of revisions, many sleepless nights, tears, and countless moments of doubt. I doubted that I was a good enough storyteller. I doubted my ability to express complicated thoughts and emotions in English. But I never doubted my decision in 2006 at the age of thirty-three to return to my dream of becoming a writer.

Forty-five years after the war, tremendous progress has been made in terms of reconciliation between Việt Nam and the United States. But the wounds that divided our country and families, both at home and in the diaspora, remain profound and painful. For that reason, The Mountains Sing places Vietnamese people at the center of the Việt Nam War in the hopes that we will be open to difficult but necessary conversations that can help one another heal. And at the same time, I hope the story of Hương and Diệu Lan helps international readers discover our common humanity, as in the words of Hương: “Somehow I was sure that if people were willing to read each other, and see the light of other cultures, there would be no war on earth.” 

—

Follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/nguyen_p_quemai

Find more about her on her website http://www.nguyenphanquemai.com/page/the-mountains-sing.html

THE MOUNTAINS SING

A Best Book of the Month/Season: The New York Times * The Washington Post * O, The Oprah Magazine * Real Simple * Amazon * PopSugar * Book Riot * Paperback Paris * She Reads * We Are Bookish

“An epic account of Việt Nam’s painful 20th century history, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.” —VIET THANH NGUYEN, author of The Sympathizer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

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 not just her beloved country, but her family apart.

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 and hope.

The Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel in English.

 

 

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing