Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family [Hardcover]

Qui C. Nguyen (Author), Qui Du'C Nguyen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1994

Nguyen Qui Duc was 10 years old when his father was captured by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. He was 17 when he escaped from Saigon, leaving his mother behind. In this stirring memoir, he tells how the Nguyen family survived prison, death, and life under Communism to reunite in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Nguyens were privileged Vietnamese: the author's great grandfather was a regent during the reigns of three kings, his grandfather was a mandarin and his U.S.-educated father was a civilian deputy to the military governor, based in Da Nang. Loyal to South Vietnam, the author's father was seized in 1973 by the Viet Cong and imprisoned for 16 years. Although the then 10-year-old author continued to attend school amidst the terrors and disorders of the war, the family's life was so altered that his mother, a schoolteacher, took to selling noodles in the streets. Their large extended family remained supportive, however. At 18, the author joined his brother and sister in the U.S. where, eventually, he became the manager of a San Francisco radio station and a reporter for National Public Radio. He relates in disciplined, moving prose his family's travails during the war, his father's imprisonment and release, his mother's courage, the ambience of the country he still misses and the differences between life in the U.S. and Vietnam. In 1989, while visiting Vietnam to film a PBS documentary on Viet Cong vets, the author located the ashes of a sister who died during the war and brought them to the country that is now his family's home.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

These two historical autobiographies describe the plight of the Vietnamese people. Both authors trace their flight from South Vietnam and subsequent lives as immigrants in the United States. Duc, a reporter, recounts his escape from South Vietnam and his family's efforts to reunite in the United States following the Vietnam War. He writes about his father's imprisonment and his mother's struggle to survive Vietnam's unsettling times as a street noodle vendor. He poignantly relates the frustration of being in exile. Although he realizes that he must accept living in a foreign country, Duc bitterly regrets the loss of his homeland. Huynh comes from a family of 17 children. In 1977 he escaped to Thailand and emigrated to the United States. After working in several fast food restaurants, he earned an MFA from Brown University. This book portrays Huynh's valiant struggle to escape Vietnam. One of the most poetic passages in the book describes how his parents shared a pair of silk trousers; whenever guests arrived, his father would use the pants while the mother had to hide in the kitchen. The strengths of these two books lie in their eloquent yet tragically matter-of-fact portrayal of courageous perseverance. Recommended for most libraries.
- Vicki L. Toy Smith, Univ. of Nevada, Reno
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201632020
• ISBN-13: 978-0201632026
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #325,216 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars expressive of compassion for Vietnam and its people, October 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (Hardcover)

The author, having grown up in an uppler-class family with aristocratic scholarly roots in the central region, thus gives another perspecitve to the Vietnam experience. His father, Nguyen Vän -Dãi (pen name Hoàng Liên), was a high-ranking civil servant who oversaw the central region from his office in Danang. During the Tet Offensive of 1968 in Hue, where the family had come to visit the author's grandparents, the father was taken away by the communists. Transferred from one prison camp to another for twelve years, he was finally released and reunited with his wife who had stayed behind in Vietnam to care for their mentally-ill daughter, who eventually died. The author, who had left VN in 75 at seventeen, was reunited with his parents in 1984. In 1989, the author returned to Vietnam on a radio assignment, and only in the last chapter before the epilogue does he tell of his visit. The book is more about the story of his family from 1968 onward than a personal memoir. The writing is direct, not sentimental, rough at times, but always expressive of compassion for Vietnam and its people. His love for the land of his birth allows him to be objective against the opposing political viewpoints that are expressed ironically all in the name of "loving the country." Though he is grateful to be live in the land of opportunity, he maintains a wariness of the excessiveness, cold routine, and "green-lawn" conformity of American society. In the epilogue he writes: "I know that my notions of my homeland are romanticized. But I am also aware of the difficulties I would face if I were to return to live and work in Vietnam. And yet, how could I not yearn for the open and gracious ways of the Vietnamese, from city folks to villagers, who smile and share with me everything from food to time and wisdom? How could I not be drawn to a people whose foremost quality is their ability to sustain unceasing hardship and loss, all the while retaining hope and faith and dignity? How could I not be drawn to a people whose dark-humored cynicism can also easily blossom into radiant innocent? How could I not be drawn to a people who can easily laugh in the midst of their own misery? I miss it all so deeply, and I want it all back, yet I know that going home and staying there is nearly impossible." He closes with, "Perhaps I will come to accept life in America. In the end, it is imperfect, and it will always remain so, for to me it is not home. But it will be the place where my parents have found a home, and the place where my parents were given back to me. As for Vietnam--perhaps I should be content that it may one day be the home of my children. It may be they who, in the future, will welcome me back there. And they will know, they will know, to bring my ashes home." This last wish of his is probably futile, but I can share in his feelings about his predicament: always longing for Vietnam yet knowing one can never live there but always feeling that the US is not one's true home. One exists in a floating exile-like state, not self-imposed or politically-imposed, but imposed by the circumstance.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Read, February 8, 2011

By 

C. Campbell (Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (Paperback)

I enjoyed reading this book. The book provided insight to better understand the Vietnamese culture, and history. This was one of several books I read before traveling through Vietnam. It made my trip even more meaningful.

4.0 out of 5 stars Note to Vietnam Tourists, January 5, 2010

By 

Lily Gibbs (NYC) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (Paperback)

I bought this for my husband, who served in Vietnam, after a recent trip there. He said it is fascinating reading for anyone who has visited or plans to.