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    Ru: A Novel
    Ru: A Novel
    Ru: A Novel
    Ebook148 pages1 hour

    Ru: A Novel

    By Kim Thúy

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction
    Winner of 2015 Canada Reads Prize
    Winner of Grand Prix littéraire Archambault
    Finalist for the 2012 Soctiabank Giller Prize
    Finalist for the 2018 New Academy Prize in Literature
    Longlisted for the 2014 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize.

    At ten years old, Kim Thúy fled Vietnam on a boat with her family, leaving behind a grand house and the many less tangible riches of their home country: the ponds of lotus blossoms, the songs of soup-vendors. The family arrived in Quebec, where they found clothes at the flea market, and mattresses with actual fleas. Kim learned French and English, and as she grew older, seized what opportunities an immigrant could; she put herself through school picking vegetables and sewing clothes, worked as a lawyer and interpreter, and later as a restaurateur. She was married and a mother when the urge to write struck her, and she found herself scribbling words at every opportunity - pulling out her notebook at stoplights and missing the change to green. The story emerging was one of a Vietnamese émigré on a boat to an unknown future: her own story fictionalized and crafted into a stunning novel.

    The novel's title, Ru, has meaning in both Kim's native and adoptive languages: in Vietnamese, ru is a lullaby; in French, a stream. And it provides the perfect name for this slim yet potent novel. With prose that soothes and sings, Ru weaves through time, flows and transports: a river of sensuous memories gathering power. It's a classic immigrant story told in a breathtaking new way.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury USA
    Release dateNov 27, 2012
    ISBN9781608199181
    Ru: A Novel
    Author

    Kim Thúy

    im Thúy has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. In 2010 Thúy won the Governor General's Award for French language fiction. She lives in Montreal, where she devotes herself to writing.

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    Reviews for Ru

    4/5

    303 ratings27 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Written poetically, insightfully, and honestly. It's a choppy (chronologically speaking,) glimpse into the life of someone who's life was turned upside down by civil unrest and outside oppression and forced to emigrate. It's the story of a refugee, an immigrant, a traveller. Worth the read.
    • 5/5
      This is a beautiful novel, written in linked vignettes that suggest the various moments of the author's history and the themes that ties the various pieces. She writes at various points about growing up during the Vietnam War, coming by boat to Canada, and settling to raise her family, including a son with autism.
    • 5/5
      I picked up this book because it was nominated as a Canada Reads finalist. It was an extremely quick read that grabbed you from the first page. Kim Thuy wrote a fictional book based upon her experiences of fleeing Viet Nam and settling in Canada. Some events were barely mentioned, but had great impact. This was a lyrical story that opened my eyes to the plight of the Vietnamese and the acceptance of Canadians for their relocation. I know it was probably not as simple as it seemed in this book, but it was a beautiful story.
    • 4/5
      Wow. Beautiful.
      An elegiac and lyrical autobiographical novel of a family that fled Vietnam in the 1970s. They arrived in Canada, via Malaysian refugee camps, and eventually settled in Quebec.

      The story is prefaced with an explanation. "In French, 'ru' means a small stream and, figuratively, a flow, a discharge--of tears, of blood, of money. In Vietnamese, 'ru' means a lullably, to lull.

      The narrator was ten years old when 'the History of Vietnam' ended her "role as an extension of my mother." Her name was very similar to her mother's, because she was the sequel to her, she would continue her story. But the events changed their own planned futures and histories. She tells their story from her perspective thirty years later, as a Canadian immigrant who had to adapt to a new country, new languages, new customs. She had to learn how to accommodate these new layers of being-ness within her own identity.

      It is not a straight linear narration, but neither does it alway jump back and forth between discrete episodes of time. Instead she shares her memories as part of the flow of her present and past life. Woven throughout is an appreciation of the power and love of family, of ancestors and descendants.

      The tale occasionally started to stray toward the territory of sentimentality but fortunately veered away before arrival. It does not dwell or revel in horrors and atrocities. It is simple, yet elegant, and quietly inspiring.

      It won Canada's Governor General's Award for French-language fiction last year, and has since won other international awards.
    • 3/5
      I found parts of this book very interesting, The format was to scattered for me to really enjoy.
    • 5/5
      What a powerful little story. Every immigrant will be able to relate to this novel which describes a Vietnamese Boat Person's move to Canada and settling down. It is a poignant description of her childhood and the stark contrast between the life in Vietnam and the new life in Canada.It is when she goes back to Vienam that she realizes that "the American dream had made me believe I could have everything." She felt the American dream had made her "weightier, more substantial."Every page in the book is philosophical. One example is the vignette where in talking about one of the persons in her boat who did not make it, Thuy says, "He'd retraced his steps to fetch the gold taels he'd hidden in the boat's fuel tank. Perhaps the taels made him sink, perhaps they were too heavy to carry. Or else the current swallowed him as punishment for looking back, or to remind us that we must never regret what we've left behind."I would recommend this book wholeheartedly.
    • 4/5
      How do you leave a country with only what you can carry on your body and make a new life in a new country using a new language? Through episodic memories that move back and forth through time, the narrator tells of her childhood in South Vietnam, of life in a reeducation camp, of a boat journey to a new land, of living in a refugee camp in Malaysia, of arriving in Canada and adjusting to a new culture and a new language, of returning to work in Vietnam years later, and of motherhood. Anyone old enough to remember images of the Vietnam War or the boat people will have no trouble visualizing what Thuy so movingly describes. It's short enough to read in a single sitting, and I think this factor is a key to its impact. Thuy pulls readers into her world and keeps them there just long enough to feel the weight of Vietnamese history before releasing them back to their own worlds.We often forget about the existence of all those women who carried Vietnam on their backs while their husbands and sons carried weapons on theirs...They were so weighed down by all their grief that they couldn't pull themselves up, couldn't straighten their hunched backs, bowed under the weight of their sorrow. When the men emerged from the jungle and started to walk again along the earthen dikes around their rice fields, the women continued to bear the weight of Vietnam's inaudible history on their backs. Very often they passed away under that weight, in silence.
    • 4/5
      This elegant little volume is called a novel, but it seems to me it belongs in a special category, with other poetic, uniquely structured narratives such as [Brown Girl Dreaming]. Its fiction contains, I'm sure, as much truth as a pure memoir and its power lies in the simplicity of the contrasts between sensual beauty and utter stinking ugliness. It is episodic, composed of vignettes, and time does not proceed in linear fashion. There is little continuity from one short section to the next (sometimes there is only one sentence on a page), but the overall picture of the life of one rather lucky Vietnamese refugee is startlingly clear. The cover blurb tells us that the title "ru" means "lullaby" in Vietnamese, and "stream" in the French of the narrator's adoptive home, Montreal. A very felicitous conjunction of meaning, and the perfect word to describe what goes on in this book. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      This is a short autobiographical, novel, told in vignettes and in a non-linear fashion. She covers her childhood in Saigon as part of a very well-off family, time in a Malaysian refugee camp, becoming an immigrant to Quebec and adjusting to “the American Dream.” Thuy also weaves in family stories and her own feelings about motherhood. The vignettes are sometimes jarring to read, as things do jump around. I liked the way the book kept surprising me, and the way the story shifts slightly with each new revelation.I enjoyed the thoughts about motherhood, and how becoming a mother herself gave the writer a new sympathy for her own mother. The language is lovely, here is a favorite part:“My parents often remind my brothers and me that they won’t have any money for us to inherit, but I think they’ve already passed on to us the wealth of their memories, allowing us to grasp the beauty of a flowering wisteria, the delicacy of a word, the power of wonder. Even more, they’ve given us feet for walking to our dreams, to infinity. Which may be enough baggage to continue our journey on our own. Otherwise, we would pointlessly clutter our path with possessions to transport, to insure, to take care of.”
    • 4/5
      Ru collects short fictional reminiscences by Kim Thuy, who was born in Saigon, survived the war, and emigrated to Quebec in 1979. The pieces are loosely connected, and this 140 or so page book is moving and lyrical. Protagonist An Tinh and her family originally are upper middle class in Saigon, with servants and chefs, but lose it all when the communists arrive. Sewing diamonds into clothes, they buy escape in a dark boat hold, with hundreds of others, to a muddy, ramshackle refugee camp in Malaysia. The living conditions will have you counting your blessings.“My parents often remind my brothers and me that they won’t have any money for us to inherit, but I think they’ve already passed on to us the wealth of their memories, allowing us to grasp the beauty of a flowering wisteria, the delicacy of a word, the power of wonder. Even more, they’ve given us feet for walking to our dreams, to infinity. Which may be enough baggage to continue our journey on our own. Otherwise, we would pointlessly clutter our path with possessions to transport, to insure, to take care of.”Tinh develops from mute fear in so-different Quebec, shadowing a schoolfriend, to someone who, upon returning to Vietnam, is told by a waiter that she cannot really be Vietnamese, essentially because she has grown too Western and sure of herself. The key is to endure - her mother passes onto her a Saigon proverb: "Life is a struggle in which sorrow leads to defeat.”Some readers have seen structural problems with the loose connections, and questioned the lack of character depth. For me, neither of these detracted from the strong writing and affecting story, as we follow An Linh and her family and acquaintances from her childhood ruin to a new country and hope.“I moved forward in the trace of their footsteps as in a waking dream where the scent of a newly blown poppy is no longer a perfume but a blossoming: where the deep red of a maple leaf in autumn is no longer a colour but a grace; where a country is no longer a place but a lullaby.”
    • 3/5
      We often forget about the existence of all those women who carried Vietnam on their backs while their husbands and sons carried weapons on theirs. We forget them because under their cone-shaped hats they did not look up at the sky...Those women let their sadness grow in the chambers of their hearts. They were so weighed down by all of their grief that they couldn't pull themselves up, couldn't straighten their hunched backs, bowed under the weight of their sorrow. When the men emerged from the jungle and started to walk again along the earthen dikes around their rice fields, the women continued to bear the weight of Vietnam's audible history on their backs. Very often they passed away under that weight, in silence.This autobiographical work of fiction consists of short vignettes based on the author's experience growing up in South Vietnam, in a prosperous family that opposed the communists in the North and was forced to flee after the fall of Saigon in 1975. She and her family spent time in a squalid refugee camp in Malaysia before they were subsequently accepted into Quebec. Although their Québécois neighbors were welcoming and supportive of the new immigrants, the trauma of their past experiences and the immense cultural differences in moving to Canada left them bereft and adrift, particularly the older adults. In Ru, Thúy introduces the reader to numerous relatives of the narrator, each of whom has an interesting story to tell. Unfortunately, for this reader at least, the focus quickly shifted to a subsequent character at the time that I wanted to learn more about the first one. In reading this book I felt as if I was in a room with 25 related people, as I was accompanied by a rushed host who insisted that I meet everyone but spend no more than two minutes with each one, when I would have preferred to listen to two or three of them individually for an hour or two. As a result, Ru initially captured my attention, due to its evocative writing and compelling stories, but the frequent shifts from one character to the next made me lose my interest in them, and this book.
    • 4/5
      Through a series of very short vignettes, some no longer than a single paragraph, Ru tells the story of Nguyên An Tinh, a Vietnamese girl from a well-off family whose life changes forever when South Vietrnam falls to the Communists. Jumping from Canada in winter, to a Malysian refugee camp, to an overcrowded and filthy boat in the South China Sea, to a privileged life in Saigon, before returning to Canada, this perhaps isn't the easiest book to follow but it is well worth persisting. But while I found the jumps in time and place didn't distract from my enjoyment of the book, I did find that the numbers of characters introduced in such a short book was a little overwhelming. Aunts and uncles and other relatives appear in great numbers but all became a little blurred after a time, meaning that it wasn't as easy to maintain interest in the other characters as it might have been. I would have liked more information about fewer people, particularly to have learnt more about Nguyên An Tinh's mother, a woman who before coming to Canada had never worked at anything other than organising her servants, but who in Canada willingly takes any job she can find to help her children get a start in life.This is another book about the experience of adapting to a foreign culture, and the misconceptions that can arise with even well-meaning interactions between locals and refugees. But overall you get a huge sense of gratitude towards Canada that I assume reflects Kim Thuy's own experience:The locals cosseted us one by one. The pupils in my grade school lined us to invite us home for lunch so that each of our noon hours was reserved by a family. And every time, we went back to school with nearly empty stomachs because we didn't know how to use a fork to eat rice that wasn't sticky. We didn't know how to tell them that this food was strange to us, that they really didn't have to go to every grocery store in search of the last box of Minute Rice. We could neither talk to nor understand them. but that wasn't the main thing. There was generosity and gratitude in every grain of the rice left on our plates.I didn't love this book as much as perhaps some others have done, but it is well worth reading, particularly in the current climate of anti-refugee rhetoric that pervades much of the media.
    • 4/5
      Ru is a memoir about of a Vietnamese refugee who has escaped the war torn Vietnam with her family. Although this is a fictional autobiography, the events described in the book feel so real, so personal. You can't help but feel that many of these accounts are based on Kim Thúy's personal experiences. Each page in the book is a vignette, a memory that takes us from the young girl's extravagant life in Saigon, to a decrepit refugee camp in Malaysia and finally to a new unfamiliar world in Granby, Quebec. We also get a glimpse into her adult life where she has a family of her own raising two children, one of whom we are lead to believe is autistic bringing forward the challenges of motherhood and the realization of what love really is.Ru is beautifully written, almost lyrical. It puts the hardships of Vietnamese immigrants front and centre. We also get a sense of how communities in Canada, specifically Quebec, banded together to sponsor and support them as they transitioned into this new world.
    • 4/5
      One issue with writers’ festivals is deciding whether to read a book before or after you hear the author speak. This was one instance where I was glad for the latter. I read Ru after Thuy’s packed-house presentation at the Sunshine Coast Writers Festival. Thuy gave a stirring account of her own family’s life in communist-controlled Saigon, their escape from Vietnam via boat, their time in a refugee camp in Malaysia, and adapting to their new home as immigrants in Quebec. Because I heard this story so vividly told in a linear format, each of the seemingly temporally random remembrances or vignettes in Ru fit beautifully into that storyline for me. Even though Ru is not a memoir, Thuy shares not only many of the experiences, but also many of the characteristics of the narrator, most notably, a predisposition to value memories over possessions. “Remembering only images that stay luminous behind my closed eyelids…. preferring them because I can shape them according to the colour of time.” (100)
    • 4/5
      Ru is a lyrical exploration of the experience of a Vietnamese girl who flees with her family to Malaysia, then Canada. She grows up, marries and has two children, and eventually returns to Vietnam. The narrator - a semi-portrait of the author - tells her stories in a series of short vignettes that move back and forth in time. The prose is crystalline and evocative - the central idea and strong images found in each vignette matter more than a linear plot. However, connections frequently appear - between the past and present, between disparate cultures, between strangers and friends and enemies. Because of the structure, sometimes it’s a bit hard to place characters and keep all the relationships straight but this contributes to the idea of everything being ephemeral, which occurs frequently throughout the book. - the family’s solid life in Vietnam is shattered and from then on their living conditions are temporary and strange. As the narrator grows up she sees everything in this light - possessions, lovers, her identity. Her relationship with her sons weighs her down for better or worse.
    • 2/5
      This is a short, poetic book about the author’s journey through life. She tells us about her childhood in Saigon, coming to Quebec with the boat people from Vietnam at ten years old, her family.

      At times I thoroughly enjoyed the way she made certain things come alive; for example “.. intensely craving a salad of green papaya with bird chilies that tore your mouth apart, that burned your lips, set fire to your heart.” p.121.

      I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.
    • 4/5
      Ru by Kim Thuy is a compilation of vignettes where each page is a separate story, complete within itself, telling of the stress of living under the communists in Viet Nam, the horrors of escaping by boat, the filth and hopelessness of the refugee camp that they found themselves in, and the many adjustments they had to make as a family and as individuals to fit into their new life in Canada. This is not a linear story, but as the reader continues through the book, it’s beautiful, lyrical writing paints a clear picture of both this woman’s experiences and her inner feelings. There is a dream-like style to the writing and at times I felt like I was intruding on a very personal vision. Ru is a story about the emigrant experience and with it’s original perspective it was very easy to forget that this is a novel not a true memoir. It is also very easy to conclude that the author drew on her own experiences to create this very intimate account. I believe that this will be a book that stays with me, and that these small stories told with grace and dignity will often be recalled.
    • 3/5
      A novel written by a Vietnamese immigrant which expresses all of the sorrowful memories of a lost country, lost citizenship, lost family members and friends, but offers glimpses of kindnesses and new beginnings as the immigrant assimilates in a new country and culture. For those who have an acquaintance with the Vietnamese immigrant experience this book gives a window into the trials of the process of leaving one's native country, the horrendous camp experience for those who fled by boat and the inner conflicts as they start life over--many of which sadnesses the immigrant is reluctant to speak. The book is well-written with a dream-like, poetic quality as the author flows between past and present.
    • 4/5
      A story of a woman born into a wealthy family in Vietnam, who spent time in a Malaysian refugee camp and arrives as a "boat person" in Grandby, Quebec. The author tells this story through a series of vignettes which are beautiful and poetic (kudos to the translater, as well). This makes it challenging to fully understand the narrator, Nguyen An Tinh, and other characters are not really developed as well. But the writing kept me hooked an a portrait of a woman emerged by the end.
    • 4/5
      This was a book of short connecting vignettes, all pertaining to Ru's life past and present. The detail in these stories and the wonderful prose kept me reading. The story goes back and forth, from Vietnam, to a Malaysian refuge camp and than on to Quebec. She comes to understand more things about her mother when she has children of her own. The war in Vietnam, to the struggle to acclimate in a foreign country and than her struggle with her autistic child are all related. In fact it is amazing how much we come to know about Ru and her family in thes3e short vignettes. The writing certainly deserves a 4, but this type of structure, plus the going back and forth did not allow me to form an emotional bind with any of the characters. I found out much information about them but the connection was not there. Will definitely read this novelists next novel because I do admire her prose.
    • 4/5
      This is quite a different approach to fiction. The chapters are only 1 - 2 pages long. The style is very poetic. The author recounts her life in Vietnam before she and her wealthy family flee the country as boat people. They end up in Montreal where they eke out a living as new immigrants.
    • 4/5
      Kim Thuy was ten years old when she and her family emigrated out of Vietnam to Canada. They spent some time in a camp in Malaysia before boarding a boat to Canada. They ended up settling in Montreal. This book tells Kim's experiences in a series of very lyrical and descriptive little vignettes in this book. Ru's writing is very descriptive and there is a definite undercurrent of wit in the pages of this little book. And the journey isn't in a regular timeline. She slips back and forth from the remote past to the present to the recent past and back and forth. She transports us seamlessly and lyrically thus putting the reader into her different settings as we follow her and her family on this journey. This book was a finalist in the 2012 Giller Prize and it won the Governor General's Literary Award. I don't know if I've ever read prose quite like this. It seemed to put me in a dreamlike state as I read. It's a short novel that doesn't take much time to read, but packed with literary genius.
    • 4/5
      This book doesn't feel like a novel, it reads like a memoir. And as I read about Kim Thuy's background I can see that most of what the central character experiences come from Kim Thuy's own history. Nevertheless it is beautifully written and really, I wanted more. I wanted to know more about how people felt about the circumstances they were in and I wanted to know more about the childhood in Vietnam. The references to returning to Vietnam in adulthood tantalized me and I wanted to learn more about that. We get glimpses of family members but I wanted full portraits. If Kim Thuy can take time from her busy schedule to write I think there is a great deal more she could add to this story. And I'll be reading it.
    • 5/5
      Life is a struggle in which sorrow leads to defeat. Originally published in French and winner of the 2010 Governor General Award for French language fiction, Ru is an ambitious autobiographical fictional debut novel that tells the story of Vietnamese refugee Nguyen An Tinh. A child of a prestigious Saigon family born during the Tet Offensive, the story is a first person narrative of a privileged world shattered by the Communist inspectors, escape to a Malaysian refugee camp, subsequent arrival in Quebec to an overwhelming foreign world of language and customs and life as an adult traveling back to Vietnam. Instead of following a traditional story-telling method, Thúy employs a vignette approach that allows the story to ebb and flow like a memory journey, each vignette connected to the previous by people, smells, sounds and scenes. Beautifully written and expertly translated into English by Shiela Fischman, Ru is as much an experience as a journey. The horrors of the Vietnam war, and the peace, resonates off the pages with meaning and we experience through our narrator the no man's land of not fitting into one's adopted country and no longer being recognizable as belonging to one's birth country: But the young waiter reminded me that I couldn't have everything, that I no longer had the right to declare I was Vietnamese because I no longer had their fragility, their uncertainty, their fears. And he was right to remind me. While it sounds like a story of struggle and loss, it is also a story about celebrating life. Beautifully written, I was surprised how quickly I was able to read this one and at the same time saddened to find myself at the end of the written journey held in my hands. Some may say the story tries to introduce too much in the mere 140 pages but I believe, in keeping with the vignette style of writing, that some topics can be just touched upon and left for the reader to explore further in their own mind.I was very happy to see the English translation of Ru has made the longlist for the 2012 Giller Prize. It is a story worthy of the three hours it took me to read it at an unhurried pace. A truly memorable read.
    • 5/5
      Best Canadian FictionUnique format may be a bit challenging to adapt to be this poetic novel weaves a tale that is memorable. Her writing immediately awakens images of faraway places.A must read.
    • 4/5
      A novel that reads more like a memoir - of Vietnam immediately after the war, of flight and resettlement in Quebec,.
    • 3/5
      This is a story of a family of Vietnamese immigrants to Canada. After the Tet offensive the capitalist, elite families in South Vietnam were ostracised by the North Vietnamese Communists who took over the country. So these families left their own countries for greener pastures. This is a story of one such group of families who after a stint in a Malasian refugee camp land in Canada. The novel deals with the escape from Vietnam, the extreme cultural shock, the condescending attitude of the residents and other adjustment issues of these families. The author has a very abbreviated subtle style of writing. She puts forward so much emotion and thoughts in a half a page chapter. Truely brilliant. 

    Book preview

    Ru - Kim Thúy

    Guide

    Chapter 1

    I came into the world during the Tet Offensive, in the early days of the Year of the Monkey, when the long chains of firecrackers draped in front of houses exploded polyphonically along with the sound of machine guns.

    I first saw the light of day in Saigon, where firecrackers, fragmented into a thousand shreds, coloured the ground red like the petals of cherry blossoms or like the blood of the two million soldiers deployed and scattered throughout the villages and cities of a Vietnam that had been ripped in two.

    I was born in the shadow of skies adorned with fireworks, decorated with garlands of light, shot through with rockets and missiles. The purpose of my birth was to replace lives that had been lost. My life’s duty was to prolong that of my mother.

    Chapter 2

    nh, my mother’s name is Nguyễn An Tĩnh. My name is simply a variation on hers because a single dot under the i differentiates, distinguishes, dissociates me from her. I was an extension of her, even in the meaning of my name. In Vietnamese, hers means peaceful environment and mine peaceful interior. With those almost interchangeable names, my mother confirmed that I was the sequel to her, that I would continue her story.

    The History of Vietnam, written with a capital H, thwarted my mother’s plans. History flung the accents on our names into the water when it took us across the Gulf of Siam thirty years ago. It also stripped our names of their meaning, reducing them to sounds at once strange, and strange to the French language. In particular, when I was ten years old it ended my role as an extension of my mother.

    Chapter 3

    Because of our exile, my children have never been extensions of me, of my history. Their names are Pascal and Henri, and they don’t look like me. They have hair that’s lighter in colour than mine, white skin, thick eyelashes. I did not experience the natural feelings of motherhood I’d expected when they were clamped onto my breasts at 3 a.m., in the middle of the night. The maternal instinct came to me much later, over the course of sleepless nights, dirty diapers, unexpected smiles, sudden delights.

    Only then did I understand the love of the mother sitting across from me in the hold of our boat, the head of the baby in her arms covered with foul-smelling scabies. That image was before my eyes for days and maybe nights as well. The small bulb hanging from a wire attached to a rusty nail spread a feeble, unchanging light. Deep inside the boat there was no distinction between day and night. The constant illumination protected us from the vastness of the sea and the sky all around us. The people sitting on deck told us there was no boundary between the blue of the sky and the blue of the sea. No one knew if we were heading for the heavens or plunging into the water’s depths. Heaven and hell embraced in the belly of our boat. Heaven promised a turning point in our lives, a new future, a new history. Hell, though, displayed our fears: fear of pirates, fear of starvation, fear of poisoning by biscuits soaked in motor oil, fear of running out of water, fear of being unable to stand up, fear of having to urinate in the red pot that was passed from hand to hand, fear that the scabies on the baby’s head was contagious, fear of never again setting foot on solid ground, fear of never again seeing the faces of our parents, who were sitting in the darkness surrounded by two hundred people.

    Chapter 4

    Before our boat had weighed anchor in the middle of the night on the shores of Rach Gia, most of the passengers had just one fear: fear of the Communists, the reason for their flight. But as soon as the vessel was surrounded, encircled by the uniform blue horizon, fear was transformed into a hundred-faced monster who sawed off our legs and kept us from feeling the stiffness in our immobilized muscles. We were frozen in fear, by fear. We no longer closed our eyes when the scabious little boy’s pee sprayed us. We no longer pinched our noses against our neighbours’ vomit. We were numb, imprisoned by the shoulders of some, the legs of others, the fear of everyone. We were paralyzed.

    The story of the little girl who was swallowed up by the sea after she’d lost her footing while walking along the edge spread through the foul-smelling belly of the boat like an anaesthetic or laughing gas, transforming the single bulb into a polar star and the biscuits soaked in motor oil into butter cookies. The taste of oil in our throats, on our tongues, in our heads sent us to sleep to the rhythm of the lullaby sung by the woman beside me.

    Chapter 5

    My father had made plans, should our family be captured by Communists or pirates, to put us to sleep forever, like Sleeping Beauty, with cyanide pills. For a long time afterwards, I wanted to ask why he hadn’t thought of letting us choose, why he would have taken away our possibility of survival.

    I stopped asking myself that question when I became a mother, when Dr. Vinh, a highly regarded surgeon in Saigon, told me how he had put his five children, one after the other, from the boy of twelve to the little girl of five, alone, on five different boats, at five different times, to send them off to sea, far from the charges of the Communist authorities that hung over him. He was certain he would die in prison because he’d been accused of killing some Communist comrades by operating on them, even if they’d never set foot in his hospital. He hoped to save one, maybe two of his children by launching them in this fashion onto the sea. I met Dr. Vinh on the church steps, which he cleared of snow in the winter and swept in the summer to thank the priest who had acted as father to his children, bringing up all five, one after the other, until they were grown, until the doctor got out of prison.

    Chapter 6

    I didn’t cry out and I didn’t weep when I was told that my son Henri was a prisoner in his own world, when it was confirmed that he is one of those children who don’t hear us, don’t speak to us, even though they’re neither deaf nor mute. He is also one of those children we must love from a distance, neither touching, nor kissing, nor smiling at them because every one of their senses would be assaulted by the odour of our skin, by the intensity of our voices, the texture of our hair, the throbbing of our hearts. Probably he’ll never call me maman lovingly, even if he can pronounce the word poire with all the roundness and sensuality of the oi sound. He will never understand why I cried when he smiled for the first time. He won’t know that, thanks to him, every spark of joy has become a blessing and that I will keep waging war against autism, even if I know already that it’s invincible.

    Already, I am defeated, stripped bare, beaten down.

    Chapter 7

    When I saw my first snowbanks through the porthole of the plane at Mirabel Airport, then too I felt naked, if not stripped bare. In spite of my short-sleeved orange pullover purchased at the refugee camp in Malaysia before we left for Canada, in spite of my loose-knit brown sweater made

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