Where the Ashes Are: The Odyssey of a Vietnamese Family (Hardcover)

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

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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 265 pages
• Publisher: Addison Wesley Publishing Company (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201632020
• ISBN-13: 978-0201632026
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,241,201 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 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

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Articulating Feelings I Could Never Express, September 14, 2008

By	C. Hua "A Student" (San Jose, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I listened to Nguyen Qui Duc's long running radio show "Pacific Time" for its 7 year run and was heart broken during its close. Researching more about the host of this show, I realized he wrote a series of poems, stories, and hosted several literary events. I immediately scoured the web to find a copy of this book and managed to get an autographed one through Amazon.

Having grown up in America with a very traditional family while living in a Westernized environment, I often felt the tug between the two worlds. Although I do retain a lot of the traditional side of things, it was always difficult for me to relate to the old stories that my parents always told.

Although I still have very different views from my parents and grandparents, Duc's ability to articulate much of what I have felt my whole life but never yet able to express and has made my journey to find myself easier.