The trauma of wars do not disappear so easy. Decades after, their painful wounds will still remain open, a knife in the heart and soul that is not going away. So many years after the end of the Vietnam War, new stories are emerging, dealing with well-hidden tabus and dramas.
An unspoken topic until recently is the fate of the so-called ´Amerasians´: children born from relationships between American soldiers and Vietnamese mothers. Many never found their father, some were abandoned and never met their parents. Some are still looking for their biological parents, some were lucky enough to find them.
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is personally involved in the reunification of families, gathering enough material to write a beautiful nostalgic book Dust Child. For the once children now adults waiting to meet their parents, the moment of the meeting is more than a joyous event of finding their lost relatives. It bears the weight of the frustration of growing up as an orphan, often in poverty, growing up with single mothers that in addition to the hardship of everyday life, had to face the social stigma of being entangled with the ´enemy´ (similar stories are in West Germany, of German women who after WWII they go involved with American soldiers).
The emotions are raw, unfiltered, direct yet powerful and genuinely human. It exposes the hopes for a better life who are never strong enough to overpass the bureaucratic harassment and awkwardness of the situations themselves.
Dust Child is not only a work of fiction developing a topic rarely featured outside the circles directly interested by it, but it is also a testimony of human empathy, shared by a gifted storyteller.
Rating: 4.5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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