Nguyen Phan Que Mai's novel 'The Mountains Sing' chronicles four generations of a Vietnamese family, from starvation to the hardships of the Vietnam War. But for Que Mai, this novel is more than fiction — it's interwoven with personal history.
"It's a really crucial novel in terms of the history that it deals with, but also in her way of looking at normal people who are just subjected to completely unexpected catastrophe," he says,"in a similar way to what we as Americans and the rest of the world [are] undergoing with this pandemic. It's a real test of character that she shows."
Before school in the mornings, she worked in rice fields and caught shrimp to sell to neighbors. On the village streets, she sold cigarettes and curtains and handicrafts she made out of bamboo."At that time, Vietnam was under the American embargo. So life was extremely difficult," she says."We hardly had enough to eat. So everybody had to work hard."
I could only write 'The Mountains Sing' having lived through difficult times. Only through experiencing by myself the challenges faced by the poorest of the poor, the most desperate, could I have that empathy."Here goes the Vietnamese saying 'good luck hides inside bad luck,' because I was so desperate. I studied day and night, and I came out as the top student."
having lived through difficult times. Only through experiencing by myself the challenges faced by the poorest of the poor, the most desperate, could I have that empathy."
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