Review of 'Memory is Another Country: Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora', Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen, Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009. 212pp. £27.95 (hardback) (Also available as an e-book)

Abstract

The photograph on the dust jacket of this book is striking. An elderly Vietnamese woman, the back of her head disappearing into shadow, faces to the left. Her eyes look down, her forehead is lined, her mouth is marked with age. It is her eyes that are particularly arresting. They have the look of someone who is remembering, who is looking back into the past, who is present but absent. It is the look we encounter in oral history interviews when a memory trigger works and the the Vietnams existing in diaspora memories, the Vietnams of literary traditions. It is a book of memories, of rich narratives and narrative analysis, and of loss, hope and grief. It is a book we should all read. Nguyen brings to the book her background in literary analysis and her immersion in the literary traditions of Vietnam. She combines this with her concern to break the silences which have surrounded the experiences of these women, and her deep and broad familiarity with scholarship that explores the difficult and distressing world of trauma memories. Each chapter is anchored by a focus on the experiences of a small number of different narrators; all are identified only by their first names. A total of nineteen different women's narratives are presented. Excerpts from interviews relate their memories; beautifully crafted commentary and analysis from Nguyen links those memories to each other, to a wide range of relevant scholarship and to the themes for each chapter.