Postcards from Nam

As a military veteran who clearly remembers our nation's battles in the Vietnamese conflict, I approached Postcards from Nam with caution. For years I was exposed to a military view of the Vietnamese and especially the Vietcong and Vietnamese Communists. Could this book help heal those emotional wounds?

When I read a professional review, I was hooked before even reading the book. The review claimed "it delves into the soul of the exile", and has "conflicts of identity and a search for self." I love books that analyze people and explore foreign cultures.

This novel is the story of Mimi (Mi Chau) and her childhood friend Nam who live in the same crowded neighborhood in Vietnam. Mimi and her parents escape from Vietnam during the American withdrawal in 1975, leaving behind Mimi's beloved grandmother. Nam pledges to care for Mimi's grandmother in the familys absence. Soon after the Communists begin their rule, Mimi loses all contact with Nam and eventually forgets the name of her childhood friend.

Mimi becomes a successful lawyer and settles in Houston. Ten years after her escape, she starts to receive hand drawn postcards from "Nam". For Mimi, this is like a mystery. Who is sending cards? What could he want? Is there special significance to each postcard's hand drawn scene? After her mother reminds her of who Nam was to the family, she queries How can I find him? What will others in the immigrant community think about her relationship with Nam?

What starts out as a "mystery story" becomes a novella of revelations of the life experiences she has shut out - causing an amnesia of sorts. Her search begins to unravel the story familiar to many Vietnamese immigrants/refugees. Mimi's and Nam's are individually stories of great contrast, yet each represents significant groups of the immigrants/refugees - stories that much of our population have never heard. Perhaps many Americans began their own selective amnesia, or lack of interest in what happened to so many individuals after the fall of Saigon. It's a sad chapter in our history, and one that deserves some attention after all these years.

The author relates one traditional Oriental love story, Rashomon. The author uses the story to ponder a deep philosophical question: " Who is to say for sure people's lies are different from their own notion of truth?" Who is to tell truth from lies? Later, she uses the image of the river of life: in the flow of the river - "in that continuous journey of ours - we can never escape being the creatures of our past"

Postcards from Nam is a captivating story and gives a very interesting picture of Vietnamese culture. Uyen Nicole Duong's writing is precise, clear, and easy to read. I highly recommend the book.

With "Postcards from Nam," Uyen Nicole Duong, has completed a series of three novels about the end of the Vietnam War and the experiences of Vietnamese children who settled in the United States. I have not read Duong's first two books on the subject, but "Postcards" grabbed me with its dual stories of lawyer/writier Mimi and her childhood friend, Nam. Mimi was able to leave Saigon at the end of the warin the April airlift, while Nam stayed and had to suffer more trauma in his eventual excape by boat. I would now like to read the two previous books in the series.

"Postcards from Nam" is written with poetic grace as well as riveting detail.I found myself caring deeply about both Mimi and her long-lost friend. This book is a fascinating exploration of the topic. It would be an excellent book group choice or as part of a college course on the Vietnam War and its after effects. I strongly recommend it.

Postcards from Nam, the new novella by Uyen Nicole Duong, is a gem, like the shard of a pearl found in the white sand, a rare find.

Just prior to the fall of Saigon, Mi Chau, age eleven, flees Vietnam with her parents to America, abandoning her aristocratic grandmother to the Communist regime.

Once in America, Mi Chau sets about creating her new life, assuming the name Mimi. She leaves behind the horrors of her flight, imposing upon herself a sort of amnesia about her youth. She attends Harvard and becomes a lawyer in the nation's capitol.

And then one day the postcards from Thailand start to arrive.

Each postcard is hand drawn with images of the Vietnamese culture, a life Mimi has forgotten, accompanied by a few lines written to Mi Chau and signed, simply, Nam. Confessions of regret, that the author was unable to protect Mi Chau's grandmother, as he promised her he would. Others profess of his longing to protect Mi Chau, to take care of her.

Slowly, with help from her mother, Mimi begins to remember.

Nam was the young boy who lived nearby to Mi Chau, who always listened to her practicing Beethoven's Für Elise on the piano, telling her she played beautifully; who knew of her love of honeyed toasts and always brought her a basket of them as a token of his devotion and adoration.

And so Mimi sets about reconstructing the past, on a mission to learn Nam's story. Like a jigsaw puzzle, Mimi fits the pieces together, from Nam's own family (now relocated to America), from a lawyer friend with contacts in Thailand, and from the old man who piloted the boat on which Nam sailed into exile. She learns of his flight from Saigon at age fifteen, his heroism in saving his younger brother while on the boat, the savagery he endured at the hands of pirates, the life he chose in Bangkok--the stone he fruitlessly pushes uphill--and finally, when the postcards stop, his relocation to Australia to enter the priesthood. Ms. Duong does a marvelous job depicting the tragic Nam through the few forlorn words he writes to Mi Chau on his postcards.

Postcards is a heart wrenching story of tragic, unfulfilled love; but it also so much more--that shard of a broken pearl beautiful in its own right. At times told with frank detachment, other times with honest sincerity, it is truly a rare find.

J. Conrad Guest, author of [[ASIN:B004S7F3D0 One Hot January (Joe January)]]

Postcards from Nam
(2011)
Postcards from Nam is a love story between a young Vietnamese girl and boy. The girl escapes to America and becomes a successful lawyer in Washington, D.C. The boy, Nam, is left behind in Viet Nam.
The girl, Mimi (really Mi Chau) has moved to Houston to live in the Parc Royale apartments, an imitation of the French Rivera as Saigon was an imitation of French cities.
As the story progresses you learn about the boy and girl growing up together in Saigon. Then the hand-made postcards start coming, all with a beautiful scene with a one-line message.
It seems to me that the author was trying too hard to include symbolism in this novel by half, at least, References to Roshomon, etc. seem stretched to the breaking point. It's almost as if the author was taking a crative writing course and was trying to impress her professor.

I don't think that I'll be reading any more of this author's work.

Gunner (Viet Nam War veteran September, 2011

Postcards from Nam is the third book in the trilogy by the author which started with Daughters of the River Huong. It is a slight book, a novella at about 100 pages. I am not sure why the author and publisher decided to take this route rather than give us a book about the brother in the story, Pi, or Peter.

Instead, we get the saga of the neighbor they left behind when the family fled during the fall of Saigon. An odd section at the back titled PostScript, Tribute to Mimi, reads like a student essay about why people should read the book but does little other than add padding to the slim volume.

Chances to link up to the previous novel are missed and while Mimi and Nam end up having a fair bit in common due to their ordeal, this is not made mention of in the novella either. While the writer has undoubted talent and certainly seems to be writing about things that are very personal to her life, like L'Art Brut, drawn on the postcards of the title, I get the sense that she is too close to the material. So close that she really can't be her own best editor.

I am glad I read it but it left me with still more questions about Mimi and her family and felt very rushed and incomplete just like Mimi's own book, the second one in the series, which had a really lurid ending that left the reader hanging. This does not really to help round things out.

While Uyen Nicole Duong's novel is short, it's certainly packed with a rich and telling story. Of all the post-Vietnam War stories I've read, this is one of the best. Mimi, the protagonist, receives unique postcards from an unknown person in Thailand. At first she thinks they're from a secret admirer who's never met her. But when they start showing up at her new address, she knows these postcards are sent with a purpose. After some investigation in the overseas Vietnamese community in the US, including her own family, she recalls Nam, the sender of the cards, and embarks on a search to find the whereabouts of Nam. And what she discovers is so chilling and haunting, it'll leave the reader thinking about this story long after she's finished it.

This story seems to be a vehicle for the author to string together short portraits of the hard life of those fleeing Vietnam in the 1970's. While it's a relief to see a work of fiction not written with a film option in mind, the prose doesn't live up to the serious content the author attempts to portray.

Too much emotion is expressed in "I felt" and not in making the reader feel it too. The centerpiece story, that of Nam, needs more development of the character of Nam, and less of the melodramatic (so bad we can't talk about it) build up to his sad story.

I received this (free) from the Vine program, but had I paid $10.95 + shipping I'd be very disappointed. It's called a novella, but at 90 pages (achieved only by spreading out the text) it is a short story better suited to a literary magazine. An essay at the end appears to be filler.

While Mimi, thriving attorney, is busy living the American dream, life-changing truths become unleashed when postcards begin arriving from an artist named Nam. Traveling all the way from Thailand, each postcard is hand-painted with strong, violent strokes and adorned with a one-line, comforting message. But who is this Nam? It is obvious from the postcards that he knows her well. But does she know him? As Mimi unlocks repressed memories and searches to find Nam, she recalls the pain, suffering, and fear she experienced as a child escaping Vietnam during the war. She also reveals the shattering pain of someone close to her.

This little, eighty-nine page novelette accomplishes much more than many 500 page novels I have read. The author elicits compassion and sympathy, while informing the reader of the pain and confusion of the Boat People. Sensitively written, the effect that this book has on the reader is very profound.

The succinct settings and character development are exquisite perfection and both effectively magnify the impact of this little book. Coupled with the insertion of beautifully poetic Vietnamese ethics and traditions, she bestows the awareness upon the reader of what it was like to be one of those refugees in a new and very different land.

Ms Duong effectively uses her words, just as Nam used the strokes of his markers and Mimi used the power of her words as she wrote. As Mimi said, "Oh Nam, words are all I have, as lines and strokes are all you have." And Ms Duong uses her handful of words to express so much! She uses them so effectively to get her timeless message of human suffering to us, her readers. This book is nothing short of a masterpiece!

A few months ago, my husband asked me to read An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by PD James. He and I tend to read very different types of books. Once in a while I try to read one of his books to help me understand him better. When I finished reading An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, I felt torn--I felt like I had been reminded of the grittiness and yuckiness of life and the human heart.

I had a similar feeling when I finished reading this book, Postcards from Nam. It had reminded me of the book I'd read by PD James from the very beginning. The brief, pragmatic use of words by the author... the details that were and weren't included... the almost withdrawal of feeling like Camus' Stranger... I was struck early on that this book is very well written. It flows well and is a short read as a novella. Words were not wasted in this book. The postscript at the end of the book mentions that words were obviously and intentionally not wasted by the author. The postscript by GBA Nash is a very interesting literary commentary on this novella.

The story itself is a bit like film noir in book form. There is a deep sadness that permeates the story. I realized when I chose to read this book that though I grew up around many people from Vietnam and Cambodia, I have known very little about their culture. This book painted a picture of Vietnam during the 70s which gave me glimpses of a world I do not know or understand. The sadness from that time affected all Vietnamese people. The main character tried to shut away her former world behind closed doors and forget about it. Others moved on and lived. They all coped with the suffering they and their loved ones had endured. This story is one of the main character opening the door and facing her losses while face who she was then and is now.

If you enjoy PD James and similar authors, I think you find this book interesting and intriguing.

Last Note: Because of the subject matter of this book, I do see this book as I might an R rated movie and do not think this book is a wise read for people under the age of 18.

The years of the war in Vietnam were wrenching even for those of us who witnessed it on the eveing news, at a remove. This deceptively slender novella packs more dynamite in its pages than others three times its length. The experiences are brought to the forefront of a young girl, her family, and her memories of their early life in Saigon before it became Ho Chi Minh City. Her early love for and from a young boy who didn't make it out of Vietnam in 1975 are surpressed until she starts receiving postcards signed by him decades later. The importance of history and the personal angle are beautifuly, almost poetically, realized, and the book will haunt me for a long time to come. Highly recommended.