One of the criteria for me in buying a book is by literally judging its cover. If it caught my eye, I’d surely pick it up in no time. The Refugees has a nice book cover with a distinguished author, Viet Thanh Nguyen who won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2016 for his book, The Sympathizer, which makes this book even more salable. On top of that, the title rings timeliness in this period where human rights are a matter of concern in many countries and possibly a great debacle in this century aside from climate change.
The Refugees is a collection of short stories of Vietnamese refugees tainted with their war history. It has 8 different stories having different faces and phases of struggles with the transition and carrying on a new life in a foreign land. Although, the story revolves around the history of war and how the people desisted it, it deeply is rooted to the concept of family. Each character’s role evolved relatively to the family structure and dynamics, thus making each stories so personal and probably relatable to many.
I. PLOT/SUMMARY
The first story deals with a Vietnamese immigrant, whose job is a ghost writer, haunted by her guilt from the past. The narrative depicts encountering death during the ordeal of traveling from a war stricken land to a perceived safe place. Another interesting chapter is a male teenager who was torn away from his family and finding himself living with two gay men in San Francisco. The shock it gave the teenager from a liberal and forward lifestyle led him to discover more about himself. Most of the stories revolve around Vietnamese immigrant characters, but there are characters whose stories are from a different perspective, for example, the story entitled, ” The Americans”, an American war veteran with a Vietnamese wife who’s daughter reconnected with her Vietnamese roots. The war veteran was too adamant to give his approval for his daughter’s choices as he is reminded of the darkness of that history he had been part of.
II. EVALUATION
I never knew it would be this hard to make a review for a book of short stories because there is no one format. Perhaps, it was also difficult in which it was not an easy read for all stories. Some chapters moved me both on a personal and political level but to be honest, some are anti-climactic which made it a drag for me to finish. I was supposed to post my book review entry 2 days ago, but I kind of was harrowing myself to give justice to this book because I’m worried that this might be too subjective, that I am not keeping an open mind. In general, it is an important book, suffice to say– to enlighten and educate us about what it is to be an immigrant or more so, a refugee.
III. INSIGHT
Another reason why I picked this book from the store is that I wanted to relate with the story; of the newness, and of second chances it offers based entirely on the title. I bought this book first quarter of this year and stack it on my shelf and said, “One day, I’m going to read this once I am living in another country for a long time”. I wanted to understand the joy and most especially the pain, so that when it’s my turn to feel it, I know where I stand on the scale. At first, I thought it was a brilliant idea to be able to compare my loneliness to others so that I could just shrug it off and then I realized it was wrong because the reason for fleeing to another country is so different, and the presenting life choices are contrasting as well. I realized, there is no standard scale. I mistakenly invalidated my own emotions just because someone is suffering more. All this book needed from me is to have an OPEN-MIND, to be ACCEPTING and be UNDERSTANDING that we all have different stories to tell.
IV. RECOMMENDATION
Good Reads website ranked the book 3.88/5 stars. I would strongly agree. It was eloquently written by Viet Thanh Nguyen but each stories on my own stand point would have a different rating as well. It was not a breezy fiction. If you ever decide to read this book, keep an open mind. Asians or even readers in a developing country would tend to relate with it, but I would say, this is not purely about what country you are from, or what race, ethnicity, history or whose descendants you have; I think it’s more of a test of will and character of a person in times of adversity, and collectively, a test of humanity.
The Housewife, MD 