Dust Child
Title: Dust Child
Author: Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Publisher: Algonquin Books: 2024
Format: Paperback: New
ISBN: 9781643755786
DESCRIPTION
Finalist for the 2024 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The author of the award-winning The Mountains Sing returns with a suspenseful and moving saga of wartime love, family, loss, and redemption set in Việt Nam.
In 1969, sisters Trang and Quỳnh, desperate to help their parents pay off debts, leave their rural village to work in a bar in Sài Gòn. Once in the big city, the young girls learn how to drink and flirt (and more) with American GIs in return for money.Decades later, an American veteran, Dan, returns to Việt Nam with his wife, Linda, hoping to find 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 son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman--embarks on a search to find both his parents and a way out of Việt Nam to 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 ultamately allow them and 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-earned wisdom, compassion, courage, and joy.
AUTHOR
Born and raised in Việt Nam, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the author of The Mountains Sing, runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the 2020 BookBrowse Best Debut Award, the 2021 International Book Awards, the 2021 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for Fiction. She has published twelve books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and has received some of the top literary prizes in Việt Nam. Her writing has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in major publications, including the New York Times. She has a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster University. She is an advocate for the rights of disadvantaged groups in Việt Nam and has founded several scholarship programs, and she was named by Forbes Vietnam as one of twenty inspiring women of 2021. For more information, visit: www.nguyenphanquemai.com
From Kirk Kellerhals, Co-Founder and President of The SouthEastAsian Coast2Coast Foundation. Intersections, Kirk's documentary about Amerasian children, won Best Inspiration Film at the 2022 Cannes World Film Festival:
"As an adopted Amerasian orphan from the Vietnam War growing up in America, I became cognizant of all the negative connotations attached to my Amerasian heritage, hence spent many years of my life denying my roots. I concealed my ethnicity and identity as a bụi đời, a "dust child". As I began to read Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's novel, I felt something I had never experienced while reading a book: a profound connection with the characters in this novel as they relate to the experiences of my own birth parents, whom I thought were dead and whom I found when I was 47 years old. Some hidden details of my life miraculously mirror what happens in this book. Dust Child is more than a book to me, it is much-needed reconciliation and healing." -Trần Văn Kirk (Kellerhals), award-winning director of Intersections, a documentary series about Amerasians and those that helped shape their lives
* A Los Angeles Times must-read March title
* A Chicago Review of Books must-read March title
* An Indie Next List selection by the American Booksellers Association
* A Library Journal “Best Book of December 2022”
*A Most Anticipated Book of the year according to BookPage, Salon Magazine, San Diego Union Tribune, Orange County Register, Sydney Morning Herald, NB Magazine, Zibby Magazine, Trenzle Magazine, She Reads, Beyond the Bookends, We Are Bookish, Ms. Magazine.
*“Achingly honest and ultimately hopeful; essential reading for U.S. audiences."— Library Journal starred review
"A powerful tale. One of the greatest Vietnam War books ever written." Nick Hilden, The Manual
*"Another triumph! Powerful and deeply empathetic. A heartbreaking tale of lost ideals, human devotion, and hard-won redemption."—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer
*"Dazzling. Sharply drawn and hauntingly beautiful."—Elif Shafak, Women's Prize shortlist author of The Island of Missing Trees
*"I truly cannot wait for the rest of the world to celebrate this book."—Chanel Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Know My Name
*"A heartbreaking, beautifully told, utterly unique story of love, loss, and longing that speaks to the very heart of the human experience."—Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Forest of Vanishing Stars
*"With her generous heart and unmatched ability to write across languages and cultures, Quế Mai is the perfect guide for the wounded who search for home and healing." Thi Bui, American Book Award-winning author of The Best We Could Do
*"Once again, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai has written a beautiful novel that shines a light on the history of Việt Nam. Dust Child is simply stunning."--Eric Nguyen, award-winning author of Things We Lost To The Water
*"Well-researched, realistic, and compassionately written. This eye-opening and fascinating novel is a must-read!"--Le Ly Hayslip, bestselling author of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places
*"Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is one of the most unique storytellers of our time. She creates plots which are Dickensian in their breadth and mastery." --Natalie Jenner, internationally bestselling author of The Jane Austen Society
*“A powerful and moving story, brilliantly told." --Robert Mason, New York Times bestselling author of Chickenhawk
*“Riveting... Nguyễn creates, in her luminous prose, a gripping and nuanced narrative.” --Steven DeBonis, author of Children of the Enemy: Oral Histories of Vietnamese Amerasians and Their Mothers
*"With great compassion, with a firm conviction in the redeeming power of love and forgiveness, and with the consummate skill of a great story-teller, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai weaves us into the lives, past and present, of those called “the dust of life”—the ostracized, mixed-race children of American soldiers; their mothers, compelled by war into prostitution, and their fathers, the G.I.’s who abandoned them and yet remained haunted by them." ―Wayne Karlin, author of Wandering Souls
“Dust Child takes on the difficult subject of Amerasians left behind once the American military fled its own misadventures in Southeast Asia. Look for a reception akin to Min Jin Lee’s bestselling Pachinko.” The Los Angeles Times
*"A family epic to remember."— Chicago Review of Books
“Nguyễn deftly wields her own polyglot talents to reclaim lives too long overlooked.” Shelf Awareness
“An insightful, engrossing novel.” The California Review of Books
From the internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a suspenseful and moving saga about family secrets, hidden trauma, and the overriding power of forgiveness, set during the war and in present-day Việt Nam.
In 1969, sisters Trang and Quỳnh, desperate to help their parents pay off debts, leave their rural village and become “bar girls” in Sài Gòn, drinking, flirting (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 young and charming American helicopter pilot. Decades later, an American veteran, Dan, returns to Việt Nam with his wife, Linda, hoping to find a way to heal from his PTSD and, unbeknownst to her, reckon with secrets from his past. At the same time, Phong—the son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman—embarks on a search 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 for himself and his family in the U.S.
Past and present converge as these characters come together to confront decisions made during a time of war—decisions that force them to look deep within and find common ground across race, generation, culture, and language. Suspenseful, poetic, and perfect for readers of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, Dust Child tells an unforgettable and immersive story of how those who inherited tragedy can redefine their destinies through love, hard-earned wisdom, compassion, courage, and joy.