Khoi song tren song

World Literature Today, Wntr, 2001 by Dinh-Hoa Nguyen

Nguyen Van Sam. Khoi song tren song. Tran Nho Bui, ill. San Jose, California. Van. 2000. xviii + 263 pages, ill. $14.

THE AUTHOR OF THIS collection of fourteen short stories is a South Vietnamese refugee writer and editor (see WLT 69:2, p. 444) who had earned acclaim even before the collapse of the Saigon government in 1975, following which debacle he chose (in 1979) the United States as his country of asylum. The volume's title comes from the last line of an often-translated Chinese poem by Cui Hao (Thoi Hieu in Vietnamese, graduated around 730 A.D.) about "The Yellow-Crane Pagoda" in Hu Pei Province: "Yen ba giang thuong su nhan sau" ("Beyond the Broad River, Its Waves, and Its Foam" [Herbert Giles, tr.] or "With a Mist of Grief on the River Waves" [Witter Bynner, tr.]). Having received classical training at the College of Letters in Saigon, where he later served on the faculty, Nguyen Van Sam has simply followed the common practice of using cogent allusions derived from Chinese literature. Indeed, not only this final story in the volume, "Smoke on the River Waves," but all the preceding ones as well reflect his background as both a romanticist and a realist writer who feels deep compassion toward the people and events in the rural settings he himself comes from.

"(What You Owe Your Mother Is) Like a Gush of Spring Water" is an insightful analysis of the psychology of a handicapped boy, who candidly tells us about his consenting to marry a pregnant girl and his embarrassment at approaching her on their nuptial night. Before that, despite his grandmother's rebuke, he enjoys sitting on his crutches outside his home and listening to the colorful profanities that a betel-chewing virago in the hamlet heaps upon the runaway fiancee of her son. In "The Coolness of Golden Years" the reader learns about the devotion of a peasant girl to her senile mother-in-law, who needs the home care and sympathy due an elderly parent in Confucian society.

Several stories are quite moving, including that of a young Vietnamese man who unwittingly harms his benefactor, or that of a refugee girl raped by her American benefactor, or that of a "Viet-kieu" returnee who seeks easy sexual encounters in the country he had left two or three decades before. This "overseas Vietnamese-American" inwardly nurtures a dream common to all expatriates of someday flying back to their homeland to enjoy the old way of life in spite of memories of, say, an elder sister's rape by sea pirates on the flight out, or of a younger brother with his unfaithful wife.

In the preface, Nguyen Xuan Hoang, another refugee writer and editor, likens Nguyen Van Sam's depiction of Saigon to Konstantin Paustovsky's descriptions of Paris. Indeed, NVS details the urban growth and development of "the Pearl of the Orient" from a malaria-infested swamp into a metropolis with multistory hotels, dance halls, coffee shops, colleges, and high schools as well as slum and ghetto areas with their substandard dwellings for laborers and coolies. When writing about the Mekong River delta, however, Nguyen proves himself a realist writer as well, one who portrays the rugged lives of South Vietnam's rice growers, fishermen, and emigrants. The latter truly approach life through sweat, tears, and blood, but also with open eyes, like Chuyen, the waitress in a Little Saigon beef-noodle shop, who has no illusions about her flirtatious boss's passes or the attentions of her refugee patrons.

Calmly, Nguyen Van Sam shares with his readers his detailed observations about the beauty of his native land and the virtues of decent individuals in his community, whether he writes about the "real Santa Claus" or the "immense [South China] Sea." Readers can learn much from this talented writer regarding southern regionalisms and colloquialisms, indeed the various patois of Co-chinchina swamplands, mangroves, and coconut farms, including the reduplicated expressions with vivid imagery that the French linguist Hardricourt has called "impressives." This feature alone amply rewards the reader of this magnificent bouquet of what can be called "written folk literature."

Dinh-Hoa Nguyen

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale