With her first novel for young readers (Inside Out and Back Again, HarperCollins 2011), Thanhhà Lai captured in verse one child’s experience adjusting to life in Alabama after leaving Vietnam. In Listen, Slowly, Lai explores the experience of Mai (Mia at school), whose parents both emigrated to the United States from Vietnam during or just after the Vietnam War, as she travels to Vietnam to help her grandmother with a very important mission.
Mai considers herself a California girl through and though, with plans for a summer of beach fun and, hopefully, catching the eye of HIM, her crush. But those plans are abruptly changed when Mai finds herself on a plane to Vietnam with her “Dr. Do-Gooder” father and her grandmother, Bà. Through much of the beginning of the novel, Mai is annoyed and determined to pout, sass, or beg her way home as soon as possible, before her best friend can decide she wants HIM for herself. But in between her focus on what might be happening at home, her difficulty in understanding and communicating with her rusty Vietnamese, and her efforts to be the obedient granddaughter she has been raised to be, Mai thinks about the purpose of the trip. Bà is there to learn what happened to Mai’s grandfather, Ông, missing since “THE WAR.” That mission, and the bits of family history doled out to and through Mai, offer a very personal story of one family’s experiences during and following the Vietnam War. Astute readers will quickly understand that the true purpose is for Bà to finally come to accept Ông’s death. Mai is there to go on this journey with her grandmother, ostensibly to help and comfort Bà, but perhaps also to learn.
Seeing Vietnam, traveling alone with Bà to the village where Ông lived, and even in her communications with her mother back home, Mai continues to vacillate between being the obedient girl she has been raised to be and the California girl obsessed with the drama back home. But as she becomes immersed in the food, people, and world of the village – even reluctantly making friends – Mai becomes more invested in her grandmother’s mission and in the smaller issues and intrigues around her.
Lai offers young readers unfamiliar with the Vietnam War sufficient background to understand Bà’s loss, the family’s roots, and the purpose for returning home in natural and interesting ways, while also exploring the long term effects of war. For example, in talking about her parents’ own respective flights from Vietnam (Bà and her children, including Mai’s father, just before Saigon fell and Mai’s mother several years after the war on a fishing boat), Mai reflects that the stories are still too painful for them to discuss, noting that they encourage Mai to know her “roots” while “random roots are encouraged but specific roots are off-limits.”
Mai is an intuitive and observant narrator, who comes to the story well-grounded in her family culture and in who she is, but who grows in maturity and cultural awareness as the story progresses. The smells, sounds, tastes, and setting of Vietnam are lushly, but not intrusively, captured though Mai’s senses. Through Mai’s “Do-Gooder” father, readers are offered insights into the struggles and challenges facing those in rural Vietnam. And yet, despite the culture clashes and examples of struggles, Vietnam is never depicted as exotic or with the stereotypical sweeps often common to books about a young person being thrust into the culture where her parents and grandparents were born. Mai is conscious that in the village she is the foreigner, with all the preconceptions that come along with that status, but she is not defined by it and she sometimes even uses it to her advantage, and to the reader’s amusement.
Lai’s use of verse in Inside Out and Back Again perfectly and artfully captured the sound of main character Hà’s experiences learning English and adapting to her new home. The prose of Listen, Slowly allows for Mai’s voice to shine, peppered with lyrical phrases and keen observations against typical expressions of adolescent angst and humorous moments, especially the internal thoughts Mai shares only with the reader. Mai’s ability to understand Vietnamese and her more limited ability to speak it are handled seamlessly with the inclusion of Mai’s own translations and through a well drawn “translator” in the form of Minh, a teenage boy who has been studying in the United States (and speaks English with a Texas accent). The culture and language clashes offer insight and humor without ever feeling as if anyone is the target of derision or demeaned by their differences.
Mai’s relationship with Bà is a nuanced and realistic portrayal of the sometimes complex relationship between a grandparent from one time and place, and a granddaughter from another. Ultimately, Mai’s issues with friendship and identity are layered and balanced with the larger themes of family and loss and the effects of war. Bà’s mission infuses a larger purpose to the trip, but the careful reader should intuit that the true journey here, for both Mai and Bà, is an emotional one.
Overall, there is much to enjoy and celebrate in Listen, Slowly, and a great number of toe holds for young readers to climb into the story. I’d suggest you read, quickly, but it’s too good not to read slowly and enjoy the journey.
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