Review of Nam Le's The Boat

Ed Martini <edmartini@mac.com>

date May 12, 2008 3:24 PM

subject [Vsg] NYT Review of Nam Le's The Boat

For those who haven't seen this yet:

A World of Stories From a Son of Vietnam

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/books/13kaku.html?8dpc

An excerpt:

“Because beneath the surface was either dread or delirium. As more and more bundles were thrown overboard she taught herself not to look — not to think of the bundles as human — she resisted the impulse to identify which families had been depleted. She seized distraction from the immediate things: the weather, the next swallow of water, the ever-forward draw of time.”

This story, like many in “The Boat,” catches people in moments of extremis, confronted by death or loss or terror (or all three) and forced to grapple at the most fundamental level with who they are and what they want or believe. Whether it’s the prospect of dying at sea or being shot by a drug kingpin or losing family members in a war, Nam Le’s people are individuals trapped in the crosshairs of fate, forced to choose whether they will react like deer caught in the headlights, or whether they will find a way to confront or disarm the situation.

The opening story of this volume, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” and its singular masterpiece, features a narrator who shares a name and certain biographical details with the author: both attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, both were born in Vietnam and both grew up in Australia. The other tales in this book, however, circumnavigate the globe, demonstrating Mr. Le’s astonishing ability to channel the experiences of a multitude of characters, from a young child living in Hiroshima during World War II to a 14-year-old hit man in the barrios of Medellín to a high school jock in an Australian beach town. Mr. Le not only writes with an authority and poise rare even among longtime authors, but he also demonstrates an intuitive, gut-level ability to convey the psychological conflicts people experience when they find their own hopes and ambitions slamming up against familial expectations or the brute facts of history.

Best to All,

Ed

Edwin Martini

Assistant Professor

Department of History

Western Michigan University

4434 Friedman Hall

Kalamazoo, MI. 49008-5334

269-387-4487

edwin.martini@wmich.edu

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~emartini/

Ky-Phong Tran <ky@frequentwind.com>

date 13 May 2008 02:56:39 -0000

subject [Vsg] My review and interview of Nam Le as well

So glad i could join the Nam Le party!

The first link is to my interview with him in the Nguoi Viet Daily News.

http://www.nguoi-viet.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=78198&z=19

The second is a deeper, more intensive interview for my new magazine, Asian American Poetry and Writing.

http://www.aapw-la.org/interviews-namle.php

All best,

Ky-Phong Tran

UC Riverside

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