History’s Collateral Damages

The Vietnamese War is a thorny subject in the ambit of contemporary Vietnamese history. Lasting for nearly two decades, from November 1, 1955, to April 30, 1975, it has been deemed as an extension of the cold war between the United States and the USSR. Communist countries such as China and the USSR backed North Vietnam while anti-communist countries such as the United States supported South Vietnam. As these superpowers converged in the battlefields of Indochina, what ensued was one of the most storied wars in modern history. The human toll was enormous, with estimates varying from one million to three million. Beyond the human cost, the war also saw the destruction of the Vietnamese jungles which were sprinkled with toxic herbicides, including the infamous Agent Orange.

However, the impact of the war lasted beyond the decades it wreaked havoc. The War was a major catalyst in the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis. The legacy of the Vietnamese diaspora was prominently captured in post-War literary works and films. Among the films inspired by the war include Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter (1978), Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Forrest Gump (1994), and We Were Soldiers (2002). In the ambit of literature, the Vietnamese diaspora was captured in Viet Nguyen Thanh’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, The Sympathize, and Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. In fact, various aspects of the Vietnamese War are prevalently captured in contemporary works of Vietnamese literature.

Vietnamese poet and writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai added her voice to the growing Vietnam War literature. Nguyễn published primarily in Vietnamese before she published her first novel and first book written in English in 2020, The Mountains Sing. Her debut novel is wide in scope, covering a vast expanse of Vietnam’s modern history, even providing brief but evocative glimpses into the Vietnam War and how it altered the landscape of modern Vietnam. A couple of years after her first novel, Nguyễn published her second novel written in English, Dust Child. Nguyễn’s latest novel provides a deeper examination of the War and how it impacted the lives of those who were involved in the armed conflict.

“The war was raging outside, people were dying, but here in her apartment, she felt like she belonged to a world of peace, of safety, protection, and complete trust. She was astonished that she could love a person beyond their language, skin color, and nationality, and that love was stronger and more powerful than any war. Love overcame fears and threats.”

~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Dust Child

Dust Child follows three different plotlines. The first plotline opened in 2016 and charted the story of Nguyen Tan Phong. Phong was originally from Bạc Liêu and was abandoned by his mother in an orphanage when he was still a baby. He was raised by a kind nun but following her death, Phong found himself wandering on the streets. Phong was no ordinary Vietnamese as he was a trẻ lai, a mixed race. His father was a Black American GI. Growing up in poverty, Phong was filled with dreams of moving to the United States under the Amerasian Homecoming Act, an act enacted by the US Congress to provide preferential immigration status to children in Vietnam born of U.S. fathers and Vietnamese mothers.

Phong’s complexion was enough – the qualifications for migration were not as stringent back then – to qualify him to move to the United States. However, after several blunders, Phong’s petition for a visa to emigrate to the United States was denied. Following his failed attempt, Phong married a kind Vietnamese woman with whom he had two children. They lived in the bustling metropolis of Hồ Chí Minh City. Life was difficult and his family was stuck in the quagmires of poverty. His efforts were all for naught. This prompted Phong to again seek a visa to emigrate to the United States. To do so, he must provide proof of his ancestry which entailed obtaining DNA from his biological father. It was an impossible task for the struggling father and husband. But Phong has endured enough for him to back down at the final stretch.

Meanwhile, American war veteran Dan arrived in Hồ Chí Minh City, or Sài Gòn when he was last in the city. Accompanying him this time around was his wife Linda. Together, they were guided by a Sài Gòn local named Thiên. In returning to Sài Gòn, the couple was hoping that a visit to the past would heal Dan’s post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); Dan was a helicopter pilot during the war. Unbeknownst to his wife, Dan has ulterior motives for returning to the place that once broke his heart and spirits a couple of decades ago. As he returns to Hồ Chí Minh City, memories sweep Dan, transporting him to his days in Sài Gòn. The time is ripe for a moment of reckoning. He can no longer skirt around the questions that he has been avoiding since the last time he was in the city.

With a polyphonic tone, the novel toggles between the past and the present, from present-day Hồ Chí Minh City to the Mekong Delta, and back to the Sài Gòn of 1969 where the readers are introduced to sisters Trang and Quỳnh. They were young women who moved from the countryside to Sài Gòn. Their father, a soldier has fallen ill. Their situation was exacerbated by the looming presence of money lenders who threatened to take away the land they farmed; their parents were swindled by the very same money lenders. To help with their father’s medication and to pay off their debt, the sisters moved to the city to seek gainful employment. However, they did not expect to land a job as bar girls at the infamous Hollywood Bar, an “entertainment” bar catering to American GIs who have proliferated the streets of Sài Gòn. At first, the sisters’ task involved coaxing the American GIs to buy them drinks, basically, tea made to appear like whiskey. It was simple but what they earned was not enough.

“Those letters hardly contained any truth, but they were beautiful to read. And upon rereading them, she saw how writing them had enabled not just herself but her loved ones to escae horror, and to experience the taste of another life. She was tempted to burn the letters, destroy all the evidence of her past, but decided instead to bring them home. They were safe now, buried under the earth, below the banana plants, below the flowers that hung like the red lanterns that once filled the village of her childhood during the Mid-Autumn Festival.”

~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Dust Child

To earn more money, however, entailed sleeping with the soldiers. Quỳnh, the younger of the sisters, melded into their new life with minimum fuss. The same cannot be said for Trang, known within the bar as Kim. Kim was at an impasse. She held her virtues dear but she was also deeply concerned about their parents. It was her parents and her sister that was propelling her forward. The natural order in Kim’s life was disrupted by a man she thought was different from the rest. Her American GI did not demand much from her while looking after her and making her feel special. Before she knew it, Kim was falling in love. But just when life was sweet and colorful, fate and its pleasant, rather unpleasant surprises find a way of restoring natural order. Or perhaps stirring trouble.

Dust Child is a multilayered but at its heart, it is the story of a war that has altered the lives of many. Death is prevalent and so is the destruction of nature and places. The story goes beyond painting a grander picture as Nguyễn probes deeper. In Phong, Nguyễn gives voice to Amerasians who were also among the collateral damages of the war. Some were the product of a night of passion, by a stranger in search of quick release. Some were genuinely born out of love. However, most were left behind by their American fathers. Beyond Vietnam, Amerasian children are also prevalent in countries where the United States has established military bases, such as the Philippines, Laos, and Japan. Many of them have since risen above their predicaments to establish a name for themselves such as Allan Pineda Lindo who many know as apl.de.ap of the popular hip-hop group Black Eyed Peas.

However, not many Amerasian children are as successful as apl.de.ap. Many of them, like Phong, had to face discrimination after they were abandoned by one or both parents. They were rejected in the land they rightfully claim as their own home. Phong was labeled as bụi đời, the “dust of life,” by the Vietnamese; this is where the book derives its title. From his childhood, Phong was mistreated due to the color of his skin. At a young age, Phong had to fight for his own survival. As such, he grew up believing that hope rests elsewhere, i.e., the United States. At one point, Phone ruminated that “a country that voted for a Black president had to be better than here, where Black people were sometimes called mọi — ‘uncivilized’ or ‘savage.’” Even apl.de.ap grew up in the same ugly realities. 

“She missed him like a rice field missed the rain, like the sea missed its waves, like the stream missed its fish. She was hungry for him, and for his love. But she noticed as the weeks went by that he was becoming more quiet, distracted, lost during his short and occasional visits. She tried to convince herself it was normal, that couples ran out of things to talk about. She wanted to know what he’d seen or done during his flights but it was a forbidden topic.”

~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Dust Child

Suffering was a prevalent subject in the novel. Most of the characters had their own story to share. Bar girls and prostitutes, like sisters Trang and Quỳnh, had to endure abuse at the hands of American GIs and also from their fellows who wanted to exploit their youth. This was contrasted by the overtones of romance subtly woven into the story. Their struggles, unfortunately, continued even after the end of the war. As they no longer had GIs to entertain, they had to make their own living. Men like Thiên who fought alongside the Americans during the war had to endure being sent to reeducation camps by the Communists. The American soldiers conveniently abandoned them when the war was tipping against them. Thiên was naturally resentful of Dan: “I served your damn war and now I serve you.” But even the American GIs had their own burden to bear. At the forefront of the War, they were firsthand witnesses of the follies of war. Many of them suffer from PTSD, like Dan.

Dust Child, however, was not entirely a bleak and hopeless story. A cathartic event toward the end of the story provides a sliver of hope for those who have been victims of the War. Nguyễn, as she has demonstrated in The Mountains Sing, has mastered the skill of intersecting individual stories. She underscored this uncanny ability but now with a single tragic event precipitating all the story’s conflicts and actions. She adroitly conjured an atmospheric tale encompassing both the present and the past. Nguyễn’s prose was accessible, riddled with Vietnamese dialogues that further added authenticity. These – which included Vietnamese proverbs and sayings – were untranslated but the meaning can be construed from context clues. The story wraps up tidily, albeit with a lie that spares others from harsh truths. One can barely also discern how sanitized the story was. Rather than examining objectively, the story felt like it was written to cater to an American audience.

Dust Child was born out of academic research that spanned seven years. Despite its flaws, Nguyễn’s execution was impeccable. She has again demonstrated her uncanny ability to intersect different plotlines into a satisfying page-turner. The conclusions may be a little predictable but the story provides a window into a subject that is forsaken. It also provides a glimpse, vivid at that, into the consequences and horrors of War. We pay dearly for War as its impact cascades years beyond it. Dust Child diverges from the typical take on the war itself but it nevertheless provides an affectionate and moving story of those who were directly involved in it. Phong, Dan, Trang, Quỳnh, and Thiên may seem like chess pieces but they also have stories that deserve to be heard. Dust Child is a moving story about tragedy, love, and redemption.

“She missed her son and thought about him every day. But she knew she couldn’t give him a future. She traveled back to the orphanage many times. She stood outside and gazed into the front yard. There, she saw her son crawling, and as he grew up, she watched him play with his friends, jumping and laughing. He was beautiful. He looked healthy. He had a good life. She wouldn’t be able to give him that. Toward the end of each visit, she would cry until she was emptied of tears.”

~ Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Dust Child
Book Specs

Author: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Publishing Date: 2023
Number of Pages: 332
Genre: Historical

Synopsis

In 1969, sisters Trang and Quỳnh, desperate to help their parents pay off debts, leave their rural village to work at a bar in Sài Gòn. Once in the big city, the young girls are thrown headfirst into a world they were not expecting. They learn how to speak English, how to dress seductively, and how to drink and flirt (and more) with American GIs in return for money. As the war moves closer to the city, the once-innocent Trang gets swept up in an irresistible romance with a handsome and kind American helicopter pilot she meets at the bar.

Decades later, an American veteran, Dan returns to Việt Nam with his wife, Linda, in search of a way to heal from his PTSD; instead, secrets he thought he had buried surface and threaten his marriage. At the same time, Phong – the adult son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman – embarks on a mission to find both his parents and a way out of Việt Nam. Abandoned in front of an orphanage, Phong grew up being called “the dust of life,” “Black American imperialist,: and “child of the enemy,” and he dreams of a better life in the United States for himself, his wife Bình, and his children.

Past and present converge as these characters come together to confront decisions made during a time of war—decisions that reverberate throughout one another’s lives and ultimately allow them to find common ground across race, generation, culture, and language. Immersive, moving, and lyrical, Dust Child tells an unforgettable story of how those who inherited tragedy can redefine their destinies with hard-won wisdom, compassion, courage, and joy.

About the Author

To learn more about Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, click here.